Friday 1 October 1999
By eBroadcast Staff and agencies.

They grow up so fast

Melissa Joan Hart's efforts to shed her squeaky-clean Sabrina the Teenage Witch image may be working better than she intended. Archie Comics publisher Michael Silberkleit, whose company owns the Sabrina character, has called on Viacom, which produces the Sabrina TV show, to fire the actress unless she publicly apologizes for her recent spreads in and Bikini magazine.

Those spreads included some shots of a nude Hart in bed covering her naughty parts with a sheet, and some frank discussion of her sexual habits and her love of tequila-- quite a departure from her television character.

Silberkleit says the spreads are a violation of the licensing contract between Viacom and Archie Comics. We're just speculating here, but perhaps this was Hart's sly way of getting out of her Sabrina contract and attracting more adult-type work at the same time.