When you hear a story about alcohol, the ‘90s, Nickelodeon and a child, you typically hold your breath and wait to learn something that’s a nauseating mixture of tragic and infuriating. But fortunately for every 75 horrifying stories you hear about a child actor’s experience, there’s one where the adults involved were at least a little bit decent.
In a new interview with Tori Spelling on her podcast, misSPELLING, Melissa Joan Hart told guest host and fellow ‘90s star Elisa Donovan about a time when she was actually spared from underage drinking. As first reported by People, Hart shared that on the set of Clarissa Explains It All in the early ‘90s, she encountered a crew that protected her, as opposed to taking advantage of her young age and childhood crushes.
“It was a lot of guys, and they were a little bit older than me,” Hart explained. “They were all in like their early 20s. And so, I had crushes on all of them, but they took good care of me.”
When she wanted to drink a beer on set, everyone said no, rather than plying a kid with alcohol. Seems like the obvious, decent thing to do, but if you’ve ever seen Quiet on Set or listened to stories about Drew Barrymore’s childhood, you’d realize that decency toward children in entertainment was in short supply back then. (Probably now too, but we’re at least a decade out from those documentaries.)
“When that whole Nickelodeon thing came out recently, this is gonna be a little, not salacious, but when that Nickelodeon thing came out recently about the kind of horrors that happened on some shows at Nickelodeon, that wasn’t my experience,” Hart explained. “Because I was protected by my crew — my guys. And I have pictures where, they’re all having drinks around me, and I’m like in a bathing suit because I’ve been rolling around in the sprinklers at an apartment complex and they’re all drinking beers or whatever. But I’d be like, ‘I want a beer. I want a beer. I want a beer.’ And at this point, I’m like 16, 17. They’d be like, ‘No. We’re not giving you a beer, because we’ll get fired tomorrow.’”
Again, this story should be the standard. But it’s actually exceptional, and both women on the podcast were aware of that.
“Thank God for them not letting me because I didn’t really wanna drink,” Hart continued. “I just wanted to hang with the cool guys. I was like, ‘I just wanna hold it. Can I just hold it? Like, it’s disgusting, but I just wanna hold the beer because I feel cool because I wanna hang with you guys.’ But they were like, ‘No, we don’t wanna get fired. Stop it.’”
It’s all actually kinda heartwarming in its own very demented way.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
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