Here's how Melissa Joan Hart Maxim photoshoot almost cost her Sabrina role

Melissa Joan Hart revealed she was nearly fired from her titular role in Sabrina the Teenage Witch after stripping for a cover shoot for Maxim magazine.

During an appearance on the latest episode of Pod Meets World podcast, the 47-year-old actress addressed her photo with Britney Spears at the New York premiere of the 1999 rom-com Drive Me Crazy, revealing she had been “crying all evening” before the photo was taken.

Melissa had been exhausted following a long day of press and was only hours away from breaking up with her friend.

According to the actress, once she was done with the premiere and was being taken to the airport to shoot Scary Movie in Vancouver, she received a dreadful call, telling her she had been fired from the horror comedy film.

“And I was put in a limo, and I was taken away, and I had just broken up with my boyfriend while we were in the movie, and I’m crying and I’m upset,” the No Good Nick star recalled.

The limo’s driver took a detour and Hart ended up going to the Planet Hollywood afterparty, where her lawyer showed up and added to her suffering.

“My lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?'” she shared. “I’m like: ‘Yes, I did.’ They’re like, ‘Well, you’re being sued and fired from your show, so don’t talk to the press, don’t do anything.'”

She then got a “phone call on my cellphone from my mother, my producer, who was like, ‘What did you do?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, whatever my publicist told me to do at the photo shoot. Like, I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.'”

The Melissa and Joey alum went on to explain that the production house instigated the issue from a line on the cover, reading, “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch,” which they claimed violated her contract with Archie Comics, which prohibited Hart from playing the character [Sabrina] naked.

The litigation ended up getting resolved because Hart said they “had no ground to stand on” since she “had no control over what they wrote on the cover.” She added that she also wrote an apology letter.