Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life (6 page)

It was always adults, especially creative ones, who had my back. They didn’t care if I wore men’s shirts, combat boots, and a scarf at the same time—in fact, they encouraged it, because they valued self-expression and being a good person. I’m so grateful that I didn’t feel the need to give in to every bit of peer pressure at school, because I had other role models to show me who I could become. It frightens me a little to think who I’d have turned into without them.

During middle school, theater gigs happened at breakneck speed:
The Valerie of Now
lab was in the spring of 1989 and
Beside Herself
began that fall. In the winter of 1990, my monologue from Peter and Joe’s
The Valerie of Now
became a thirty-minute intro for the Off-Broadway play
Imagining Brad
at the Players Theatre on MacDougal Street. Our “pilot” was picked up!

Rehearsals for
The Valerie of Now
monologue were much more relaxed and enjoyable than those for
Beside Herself.
And what an incredible acting exercise for a thirteen-year-old. Since a monologue by definition is one actor on stage performing solo, I spent most days in a room with just Peter and Joe—and we had a really good time. For this performance, I’d moved from the bike during our lab to a sofa now, explaining what was about to happen in the play by pretending to talk to myself and to friends on the phone. They cut all the songs except “I Am Woman,” probably because they weren’t impressed with my vocal skills. Here, I burst into Helen Reddy while jumping up and down on the sofa as the lights faded. (I made couch-jumping a thing, before Tom Cruise did it on
Oprah.
) This ending was different from what the guys had originally written, which was me making out with a pillow as if it were a boy. But as a kid myself, I was too embarrassed to perform this in front of two older men, much less an audience. I shyly confronted Peter and Joe about my trepidation to kiss a pillow onstage, and they listened to my fears and changed the scene so I’d feel more comfortable.

I learned my entire monologue so fast during rehearsals that Joe and Peter needed other interesting ways to fill our time. We did great acting exercises, similar to the ones I’ve heard that you learn at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. I ran around the room saying my lines as lots of different characters with all kinds of voices. The intention was to loosen me up and help me feel free and comfortable with the words I was saying. I repeated my lines as a baby, as Oscar the Grouch, as Jessica Rabbit … so fun.

Another clever activity was supposed to get rid of my harsh New York accent. For this, Joe and Peter asked me to repeat the phrase “calling all dog daughters” over and over again for days, until it went from sounding like “cawling awl dawg daaaawters” to the stripped-down, nonregional diction that’s become natural to me ever since. Well, once in a while, I do slip up. Years later, on the set of
Clarissa Explains It All,
the word “paranoid” always came out as “paranawd,” and on
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
, I once said “Santa Claws.” If you catch me after four tequila shots or cut me off on the 405, my inner New Yawker also rears its ugly accent. Then again, my diction is easily malleable. Because I married an Alabama man, I often speak with a Southern lilt. I basically went from Fran Drescher to Delta Burke—with a theatrical respite in between. But no matter how much my husband tries to correct me, a Florida orange will always be a “Flarrada awrange.”

In the eventual performance, my monologue in
The Valerie of Now
came across as the very grown-up and humbling text it was, but I couldn’t have done it without the skilled and inspiring support of my industry role models. My monologue was about how I’d gotten my period for the first time and had no idea how to handle it except to “stuff a bunch of tissues up there!” This was a pivotal line in the piece, because after my best Helen Reddy, the play went on to portray my Valerie character all grown-up and married to a blind man with no arms as a way to deal with her father physically and sexually abusing her on her birthday, when she got that first period.

I was secretly mortified to talk about menstrual blood and abuse implications like this, but I pulled it off with maturity. In fact, Frank Rich wrote in
The New York Times
, “Melissa Joan Hart delivers a precocious comic monologue with the worldly showbiz verve of a stand-up comedian more than twice her age. If she’s not careful, someone may write her an
Annie 3.
” This review, plus word-of-mouth buzz, is one of the things that helped me score my
Clarissa Explains It All
audition that summer, just a few months later. In fact, Mitchell Kriegman,
Clarissa
’s creator, joked that one reason he hired me was because his vet saw
The Valerie of Now
and named his stray dog after Valerie. I’d like to think that in a few years, when I went on to understudy three roles in
The Crucible
at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway with Martin Sheen and Michael York, this part played a role in getting that job, too.

The most surprising thing to me about the people who impact us most, especially during an influential time, is how long their imprint lasts. In 2001, I bumped into Calista at Madison Square Garden, when we were both performing in Eve Ensler’s
The Vagina Monologues
V-Day fund-raiser to end abuse against women. I’d only seen Calista once since we worked together, when I briefly ran into her as she was walking her dog. But here we were again, backstage for a show, and it felt surreal. We hugged and then bolted into a tiny bathroom to have a smoke. We were both jittery about being on the same stage with Meryl Streep and Glenn Close while reciting lines about orgasms and rape.

I took in the 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, Florida!

Years later, Mitchell told me it was the one-two punch of my outfit and disdain for popular music that helped him choose me to play Clarissa. That, and the fact that he liked my performance, especially when my overall strap dropped at the exact same part of my monologue during all three auditions—a move he assumed was intentional, but was really the result of how I gestured while reciting my lines. Funny enough, Mitchell had been hard-set on Clarissa being a brunette, since blondes rarely fit his idea of the nonconforming, feisty, smart, and relatable type he wanted to depict on his show. But by being myself, I was able to charm him into admitting that blondes could be all these things too.

*   *   *

While I was auditioning for
Clarissa,
I simultaneously tried out three times for the NBC show
Blossom,
which was about another strong-willed teenager and her family, but I was going back for the role of her ditzy best friend, Six. I thought this character was quirky and silly, but also more naive than Clarissa. If given the choice, which character would I prefer to play? I prayed late into the night, asking for guidance to figure out exactly what I wanted for my future. I was raised Catholic, after all.

In my head, I weighed the pros and cons of being on both channels. As a fan of NBC’s Thursday night lineup, which at the time included
The Cosby Show, A Different World,
and
Cheers,
I knew and liked the kind of programming NBC delivered. I also loved Nick, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on a kids’ network. Would teenagers actually tune in? Would I limit future jobs by endearing myself to such a niche audience? Then again, I knew
Clarissa
would be my show on Nick, and on NBC, I’d be the sidekick. Well, God answered my prayers like He always does.
Clarissa
it was. I was catapulted into the world of sitcom TV for the first time, and spent the next four years shooting sixty-five episodes of a very funny show that to this day makes me crazy proud.

Clarissa
was about a spunky girl with typical preadolescent conflicts that mostly revolved around family, school, and social situations—driving, first crushes, sibling rivalry, drinking, babysitting, bullies, that kind of thing. She had a best friend named Sam, played by Sean O’Neal, who was an optimistic foil to Clarissa’s get-real attitude. There was no sexual tension between them, which was and still is a rare dynamic when you put a boy and girl on a bedroom set together. Clarissa’s parents trusted her to make a lot of her own decisions, but gave her advice when she needed it. This was a newer way to portray the American family, as well. Clarissa looked up to her mom and dad, but more often than not thought she was smarter than her daffy folks, like most teenagers do. I think teens liked watching that dynamic play out. Others watched to hear the “Na Na” theme song, to identify with Clarissa’s friendships, and a lot of fans thought it was fun that she invented her own video games. I think this last point made her relatable to guy viewers, who tuned in to see a pretty, smart girl who was also into a hobby they were.

Today’s tweens have been weaned on girl-centric shows like
That’s So Raven
and
Gossip Girl,
but casting a young female as a sitcom lead was still a risky, innovative move in 1990.
Square Pegs
and
Punky Brewster
helped pave the way, but before
Clarissa,
most teen female sitcom characters played sidekicks, girlfriends, and sisters. Girls on
The Cosby Show, Family Ties,
and
The Facts of Life
were smart and sassy, but they didn’t have the energy and attitude that Clarissa did. Mitchell has even said in interviews that he named the character Clarissa because it was so distinct she could also hate it—which is what she says in the series opener. Who couldn’t identify with that? (Her last name, Darling, was inspired by Wendy Darling from
Peter Pan
.)

The way
Clarissa
was shot also helped the show find its place in the zeitgeist. The movie
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
had just broken the fourth wall—that’s when you acknowledge the audience through the camera, which is said to allow the actor to bust through the imaginary boundary between the fictional work and its audience. This was a theatrical technique that, when used on TV, was mostly done on variety shows like
Saturday Night Live
or
In Living Color
. But when Ferris did it, it caused a commotion, and our show followed suit. More than anything, though, when Clarissa delivered her lines down the barrel of the camera, it was a way for her to bond with the audience. Mitchell has said that he wanted this to make viewers feel like they were in the room with her. Clarissa’s connection was essential, since both sexes would only watch a female lead if the girl were cool enough that boys liked her and girls wanted to be her.