‘90s icons Melissa Joan Hart and Will Friedle opened up about their short-lived relationship as teens while on their respective hit shows.
“I was with you for, like, your 14th birthday or 15th,” Friedle, 47, shared during a recent episode with Hart, also 47, on his “Pod Meets World” podcast alongside cohosts Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong. “Remember we went to some place where it [had] those big tanks you could drive or shoot the tennis balls at? We went out for that, and we were, like, making googly eyes at each other. And by the end of the night, we were ‘dating.’”
Hart — who got her start on Clarissa Explains It All in 1991 before starring on Sabrina the Teenage Witch — added that the former couple called each other “a few times on landline.” The Boy Meets World alum joked, “It was a whirlwind romance.”
The pair both moved on from their brief romance with different partners.
Hart tied the knot with Mark Wilkerson in July 2003 and welcomed sons Mason, Braden and Tucker in 2006, 2008 and 2012, respectively. Friedle, for his part, married wife Susan Martens in September 2016.
Hart and Friedle revealed in the same episode that they are now working on a new film together.
“Essentially … Melissa and I did a movie together back in the ‘90s [that was never finished] for a bunch of funny reasons,” Friedle explained. Hart shared she was “super excited” to star in the new project. “I was like, ‘We have to do this! I have to be in this with you,’” she gushed.
The actress also admitted later on in the podcast that she was nearly “sued and fired” from her starring role as Sabrina Spellman in Sabrina the Teenage Witch due to a racy photo shoot she did for Maxim magazine.
While at an after party for the premiere of 1999’s Drive Me Crazy with Britney Spears, Hart’s lawyer showed up and explained that she was being let go from the show.
“So I get a phone call on my cell phone from my mother, my producer, who was like, ‘What did you do?’” Hart continued. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know, whatever my publicist told me to do at the photo shoot. I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.”
Hart explained that the reason for her near-firing was because of the cover line, “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.” Archie Comics accused her of being in violation of her contract, which stated that she “would never play the character naked.” However, after writing an apology letter, the accusations were quickly dropped.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch ran from 1996 to 2003, and was later rebooted in 2018’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with a new cast. (Hart does not make an appearance in the Netflix series.)
