Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life by Melissa Joan Hart
Authors: Melissa Joan Hart
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moment, as we puffed and caught up. Just two girls ashing their Marlboros into a locker room toilet, trying to beat their nerves and play it cool.
Chapter 5
BEING CLARISSA
In the summer of 1990, my agent, who always booked my jobs, called my momager about having me audition for a new sitcom called Clarissa Explains It All for Viacom’s children’s cable channel, Nickelodeon. Until then, Nick aired mostly kids’ variety programs like Dusty’s Treehouse and Livewire, and game shows like Double Dare, which was loved for its gooey slime pranks. Their Nick at Nite programming included mostly live-action sitcom reruns like The Donna Reed Show, Dennis the Menace, and The Monkees that appealed to adolescents, but there weren’t any non-syndicated sitcoms specifically targeting teens except for Hey Dude, a Western series with a male lead, whose first episode ran in 1989. So when Clarissa was set to debut in March of 1991, it was nicely positioned to make an impact with a new audience. The creators hoped the teen sitcom would appeal to boys and girls by casting a clever, compassionate, and free-thinking female lead. Not only was that a first for Nick, but a groundbreaking concept for network television programs at the time too.
I remember the Clarissa audition process like it was yesterday. All Mom and I knew about the character was that she was a tough-minded teenager, so we decided I should wear my pink T-shirt and faded blue denim short-overalls—sweet and tomboyish. The first audition didn’t feel any different from others I’d been on, but I nailed it nonetheless. Maybe that’s because I’d just finished playing a strong girl in The Valerie of Now and my head was still in a spitfire place. Acting like a willful sassypants was becoming second nature to me.
The producers and casting people called me back for a second go, and I repeated the pink-tee-and-overalls look. Once I chose an outfit for an audition, I always wore it for callbacks, hoping it was a look that the producers liked for the character; seeing me in it again also helped them remember me. The waiting room felt like an intense pressure cooker this time around, and my competitors’ faces were more focused and less friendly than I’d remembered. I made it to a third callback, and while wearing my good-luck outfit yet again, the show’s creator and executive producer, Mitchell Kriegman, sat me down for a talk after I reread my lines to him. He asked me if I liked New Kids on the Block, the newest boy band to hit the radio waves.
“Euuuuch,” I groaned. “I hate them.”
Though I was being honest, I immediately clammed up with regret. This was a popular group, and for all I knew, Mitchell was a huge fan like the rest of America. What if he listened to “The Right Stuff” on his way to the studio? Or had a daughter with New Kids bedsheets and posters of their greasy faces, just like my cousins did? Mitchell paused before asking me what music I did like. I told him I liked They Might Be Giants. I couldn’t get enough. This wasn’t a band that most thirteen-year-olds listened to, but I spent a lot of free time lying next to my tape player singing, “Istanbul was Constantinople/Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople…” Mitchell smirked and seemed to make a mental note, but all I could think was that I’d blown the audition.
The next day, when Mom and I were on our way to a different audition, my agent paged Mom’s beeper. We ran to the nearest pay phone, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Nineteenth Street, to ring her and quickly learned that I had been offered the part of Clarissa . We screamed like crazy, jumped up and down, and celebrated with a Chipwich. I did the pilot for Clarissa in the fall of 1990 and by January, we were in production on our first thirteen episodes of the show. We shot at the Nickelodeon studios, a TV studio/attraction at Universal Studios that had opened in Orlando a year earlier. I was going to Hollywoo—er,
Chapter 5
BEING CLARISSA
In the summer of 1990, my agent, who always booked my jobs, called my momager about having me audition for a new sitcom called Clarissa Explains It All for Viacom’s children’s cable channel, Nickelodeon. Until then, Nick aired mostly kids’ variety programs like Dusty’s Treehouse and Livewire, and game shows like Double Dare, which was loved for its gooey slime pranks. Their Nick at Nite programming included mostly live-action sitcom reruns like The Donna Reed Show, Dennis the Menace, and The Monkees that appealed to adolescents, but there weren’t any non-syndicated sitcoms specifically targeting teens except for Hey Dude, a Western series with a male lead, whose first episode ran in 1989. So when Clarissa was set to debut in March of 1991, it was nicely positioned to make an impact with a new audience. The creators hoped the teen sitcom would appeal to boys and girls by casting a clever, compassionate, and free-thinking female lead. Not only was that a first for Nick, but a groundbreaking concept for network television programs at the time too.
I remember the Clarissa audition process like it was yesterday. All Mom and I knew about the character was that she was a tough-minded teenager, so we decided I should wear my pink T-shirt and faded blue denim short-overalls—sweet and tomboyish. The first audition didn’t feel any different from others I’d been on, but I nailed it nonetheless. Maybe that’s because I’d just finished playing a strong girl in The Valerie of Now and my head was still in a spitfire place. Acting like a willful sassypants was becoming second nature to me.
The producers and casting people called me back for a second go, and I repeated the pink-tee-and-overalls look. Once I chose an outfit for an audition, I always wore it for callbacks, hoping it was a look that the producers liked for the character; seeing me in it again also helped them remember me. The waiting room felt like an intense pressure cooker this time around, and my competitors’ faces were more focused and less friendly than I’d remembered. I made it to a third callback, and while wearing my good-luck outfit yet again, the show’s creator and executive producer, Mitchell Kriegman, sat me down for a talk after I reread my lines to him. He asked me if I liked New Kids on the Block, the newest boy band to hit the radio waves.
“Euuuuch,” I groaned. “I hate them.”
Though I was being honest, I immediately clammed up with regret. This was a popular group, and for all I knew, Mitchell was a huge fan like the rest of America. What if he listened to “The Right Stuff” on his way to the studio? Or had a daughter with New Kids bedsheets and posters of their greasy faces, just like my cousins did? Mitchell paused before asking me what music I did like. I told him I liked They Might Be Giants. I couldn’t get enough. This wasn’t a band that most thirteen-year-olds listened to, but I spent a lot of free time lying next to my tape player singing, “Istanbul was Constantinople/Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople…” Mitchell smirked and seemed to make a mental note, but all I could think was that I’d blown the audition.
The next day, when Mom and I were on our way to a different audition, my agent paged Mom’s beeper. We ran to the nearest pay phone, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Nineteenth Street, to ring her and quickly learned that I had been offered the part of Clarissa . We screamed like crazy, jumped up and down, and celebrated with a Chipwich. I did the pilot for Clarissa in the fall of 1990 and by January, we were in production on our first thirteen episodes of the show. We shot at the Nickelodeon studios, a TV studio/attraction at Universal Studios that had opened in Orlando a year earlier. I was going to Hollywoo—er,
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