Melissa Joan Hart is opening up about her experience at Nickelodeon amid the new controversial docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
The actress — who starred on the Nickelodeon show Clarissa Explains It All from 1991 – 1994 — appeared on the Meghan McCain Has Entered The Chat podcast where she was asked if she watched the docuseries, which offers a disturbing look behind-the-scenes of some of the network’s children’s shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“I have not seen the documentary and that’s a mistake,” Hart, 47, admitted. “I think I need to see the documentary. I keep meaning to, but at night when I go to bed, again, I’m like, ‘Eh, Friends.’ It’s too late, I don’t want to do that right now. I’ll get worked up.”
Meghan McCain, 39, also asked her if she experienced any “creepiness” while working under the network, as several Nickelodeon stars including Drake Bell detailed allegations of abuse they experienced while working on shows at the time on the docuseries.
The Sabrina the Teenage Witch star, who said she had worked in Nickelodeon’s Orlando studio, told McCain that she “had nothing but a wonderful experience” working for the network aside from the “long hours.” However, she noted that was not reflective of every child star’s experience as a whole.
“I don’t know other people’s experiences. I’m not negating anything anyone else says,” she said. “I’ve never been told these people’s stories that are in the documentary or and I have to say I’ve never heard a story from a Nickelodeon star personally.”
“No one’s come to me and talked to me about any of these situations, and that’s not to say anything about anyone’s story,” she continued. “I absolutely trust and believe them 100 percent.” She then went on to detail some of the good and bad things she faced while working on Clarissa Explains It All, which included memorizing “long monologues” and shooting the show “almost as if it was live.”
“[There were] long hours, lots of repeating the monologue over and over and over,” Hart recalled. “[And] long dialogue scenes and then school and then SAT’s and college applications and one day to be social, one day off, and so that was just the hard part for me, was just my schedule.”
However, she also shared that she felt “very protected and very safe” on the set, despite her mother having not been around for every shoot as she was “juggling” all of her siblings and their work across the U.S.