Melissa Joan Hart Doesn't Want You To Know These Secrets

She had disputes with her management

Hart had some serious management issues in 2011 that may have thrown a wrench into her ability to get work for a time. The Hollywood Reporter reports Hart's former talent manager, Kieran Maguire, filed a lawsuit against the actress for alleged unpaid commissions. Maguire claims that Hart hired him in 2006 when her acting career was "dwindling," and that she made an oral agreement to pay him 10 percent commission for her work. He claims that after repping her for five years and nabbing her the Melissa And Joey gig in 2010, she fired him in March 2011 and refused to pay him for commissions beyond the first season of the series. They settled the lawsuit in 2012, but having something like that on her record in the business may make other managers and agents think twice before repping her, whether or not the allegations were accurate or fair.

She doesn't rub elbows with other stars

In her 2013 tell-all book, Melissa Explains It All (via Life & Style), Hart explained that she avoids the Hollywood lifestyle, as well as the paparazzi-hungry celebs who embrace it—though she admits that she dabbled in some dangerous stuff briefly when she was younger.

"I experimented with weed, Ecstasy, mushrooms and mescaline for about a year and a half," she said. She added that she once took Ecstasy at the Playboy Mansion in 1999 and made out with a girl on the limo ride home, then went to a Maxim photoshoot when she was still high, noting, "That was my third or fourth time on Ecstasy." She also claimed that Paris Hilton once offered her cocaine, which she rejected. "I was kind of running with a bad crowd," she wrote. "I just didn't enjoy taking drugs. I don't like the loss of control." (Hilton denies the cocaine offer ever took place.)

Hart also claims that Jerry O'Connell was a "man-w***e" that she made out with a few times and that she briefly dated Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. She also claims that she's not a fan of Ashton Kutcher, writing, "Ashton and I just didn't get along." She alleges that the Punk'd star made so many "smarta** remarks" at one of her parties that she threw him out.

She likes working behind the scenes

Hart revealed to Rare.Us that as much as she loves acting, she also enjoys behind-the-camera work. "My fondest memories really came from what happened behind-the-scenes. Just having the privilege of working with some amazing people in front of and behind the camera. I've also really loved physical comedy," she gushed of her work on Melissa And Joey.

Hart was an executive producer of the series for its entire run from 2010 to 2015. She also served as a producer and/or executive producer of Sabrina The Teenage Witch for 78 episodes, as well as on TV movies Broadcasting Christmas (2016), Santa Con (2014), My Fake Fiance (2009), and Rent Control (2003).

Hart has also tried her hand at directing. She directed seven episodes of Melissa And Joey, nine of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, TV movie Santa Con (2014), an episode of Taina in 2002, and an episode of So Weird in 2000.

She doesn't want to live in the past

Hart isn't too eager to reprise her iconic role as the titular Sabrina The Teenage Witch, even though the show recently celebrated its 20th anniversary of the premiere. "There's a lot of talk about a Sabrina reboot," she told E! News. "I feel like almost every day, somebody's calling me about it. Would we do it? Should we do it? How do we do it? I think the thing about reboots is they're really hard to do. They're hard to do right. I think sometimes it's better to just leave it in the past unless you do it really, really great."

However, Hart was a little more willing to throw back to her first lead role on TV as the titular character in Clarissa Explains It All, as long as the story was good. She told Entertainment Weekly, "I just had a meeting with my agents where we were discussing the possibility of that, but that's really up to Nickelodeon; I think they still hold the cards for that. It would depend on what the deal was, and it would depend on the situation and the character, like how is she used, who's going to write it, because it's got to be done right; if you do it wrong it's just a bummer. It can't just be slopped together because some fans might watch it."

She added, "I'd be open to it. I don't want to say no, but at the same time I'm not too thrilled about the idea; as with any reboot, it has to really be done right. I think with Fuller House, they've taken a great approach with it. I'll never say never, but it would have to be a very interesting scenario."

Her priority is parenting

Once Hart became a mom, work took a backseat to parenthood. The mother of three boys told Us Weekly in November 2016, "I have mom guilt that I'm here right now and I didn't put my kids on the school bus…I didn't spend enough time with this one…didn't pack a healthy-enough lunch. I threw away some toys that they love. You really have this guilt every single day, and it eats away at you that you're not a good person and you can't do it right."

She also told People that working in Los Angeles was tough when her family was home. "I just had the last six weeks off and I got to be home [in Connecticut]," she revealed in October 2015. "Now I'm going to go back to the West coast for the next five months [to film Melissa & Joey]. My kids are in school so they have to be here—it is really hard…We're just taking it a month at a time. I see them every other week. It's difficult but at least I can also focus on work and then go home and be a mom."

She's politically outspoken

While many celebrities are outspoken in favor of Democratic candidates, Hart supported Mitt Romney in the 2012 race and faced a slew of vitriol online for it. WENN (via AT40) reports that after Barack Obama won the 2012 election, Twitter users bullied the actress, with one troll calling her "a fat, unbankable, untalented, uneducated, neo-con, bad mom, child star from the 80s" and another writing, "hey Sabrina, f**k you."

She came under criticism again in 2016 when she actively championed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, chairing his Connecticut campaign. "I want to break away from this two-party system and I think it's important for people to know that there's another candidate out there who really toes the line between Democrat and Republican," she told People. "I mean he's Libertarian. But socially he's liberal, but fiscally conservative."

Hart's more conservative leanings make her a minority in Hollywood, and not seeing eye-to-eye politically with her peers may have cost her work.

Her faith is important to her

Hart is a religious Christian, so a lot of the subject matter in typical Hollywood fare isn't really up her alley—and she's gotten blowback from both sides for her roles in Sabrina The Teenage Witch and for God's Not Dead 2, in which she plays a Christian public school teacher who gets sued for comparing the teachings of Jesus with those of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

"For the longest time, while I played a witch on television [on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch], the Christian community attacked me for popularizing the magic aspects on that secular TV show," Hart told The Chicago Sun Times. "Now it's the opposite. I'm getting grief for playing the good Christian woman who is being persecuted by the outside world! Today, there are a lot of Christians being persecuted for their faith, far beyond the freedoms this country was founded on…In the past, mainstream Christians were members of what we could call the big powerhouse religion at the time—and may have been doing a fair amount of persecuting minority religions. But now those Christians feel their faith is something that is trampled on or ignored. Now the tables have turned."

How she can turn it around

As the success of Fuller House demonstrates, there's a huge market for 90s nostalgia. Reprising her iconic roles of Sabrina or Clarissa, even just for a reunion show, could be hugely bankable for Hart. Hart's biggest successes have been in television, and with her directing and producing experience, she may be able to launch a successful sitcom of her own following in the steps of Melissa & Joey. Since being with her sons is so important to her and she doesn't necessarily want to leave her Connecticut home, she may consider getting into writing or producing children's programming so she can have a schedule that accommodates motherhood and can adhere to her own personal principles.