Actress Melissa Joan Hart revealed that she once turned down an offer to pose for Playboy during an appearance on the Sibling Reverly podcast with Kate and Oliver Hudson.
Hart, best known for roles as the title characters on Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, said she felt a burden of accountability at a young age being the oldest of eight children and said her decision to decline the adult publication's offer positively impacted her family and future children, acknowledging that her previous decision to pose for the tamer, but still racy, Maxim Magazine in 1999 led to her brother and father being "tortured" by people.
“I didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass them or hurt them,” Hart told the sibling co-hosts.
“I was like, ‘I can’t do it,'” she added. “I can’t do it, and they offered me a lot of money, and I was like, ‘I can’t do it because I don’t want my brother to be hurt by that, like the last thing he needs. He’s already getting tortured by me and underwear, let alone completely.’
“And I would have been willing to do it because I was like, I’m not ashamed of my body. I’m proud of my body. I’m fine with that. But then I’m really glad I didn’t because now I have three boys and I don’t need those images out there for them," Hart continued.
Hart, who married musician Mark Wilkerson and later welcomed sons Mason, Braydon and Tucker, said she was "kind of happy I made that choice for my brother, which then also translates to my children."
“I always kind of knew that that would be a correlation, that someday, I would have children that would you know, what do I want them to see?,” she said. “And I kind of played that through my siblings’ eyes, so, I feel like I also was raised by these hippie parents who were growing their own pot in the garden.”