TV's Sabrina Protects Lil' Sis
Wednesday, July 21, 1999

Avid Daily Dish readers are no doubt aware that Melissa Joan Hart often gives interviews on the subject of peer pressure in both Hollywood and middle America. Well, it's important to TV's teenage witch that her young and impressionable siblings know it's OK to be normal, too.

"I went to high school and did the whole teenage girl thing, and the pressure is everywhere. It's in Hollywood and on the cover of every magazine you see. There's always pressure to look a certain way and act a certain way. And one thing that I've always tried to get across is that you can be yourself. You don't have to be glamorous as long as you make a good impression," she told reporters during an intimate roundtable to promote Sabrina, the Animated Series, premiering this fall on UPN. Hart plays Sabrina's aunts, Zelda and Hilda, while her 13-year-old sister, Emily, provides the voice for Sabrina.

"Any project I do, I try to think about my little siblings and how they'll think of me in that light."

Speaking of which, Melissa admits that she was burned by a recent cover and interview for Movieline magazine. "Everything I said was the truth, but the way it was put was a little bizarre. Sometimes you read it and you're like, 'Wow! Did I really say it like that?' "

Emily, too, has had to deal with the pain of stardom. Five years ago she was starring on Broadway in The Who's Tommy and going to school. According to Melissa, "She got shingles from the stress." ^× Jonathan Reiner