It was definitely a really talented group of writers. Those writers went on to show-run shows like Friends and The Office and write things like The Hunger Games. It was interesting to be on such a smart show. And we did have a lot of the same temperament, a lot of the same no-nonsense attitude.
With Clarissa, it was interesting because I was the same age as Clarissa. I don’t take a project unless I know I’m going to be proud of it. You were a teenager when you did the show and I was wondering if you had a sense then that you were creating something that would remain in the teen pop culture firmament for so long. So with Clarissa Explains It All, it’s still beloved. I think I probably lost about 5 pounds of sweat. to get some of it done before the heat took over.
It’s not like most places where around 3 p.m. And for some reason in Montana it gets hotter and hotter until like 6 p.m. It was miserable to be wearing those clothes every day and take them off at lunchtime and then have to put them back on again. To be 97 and wearing flannel and jeans and Spanx and cowboy hats and boots and vests and jackets and neckties-it’s a lot. Those places aren’t built with air conditioning because it’s never supposed to get that hot. Places like Montana, and even when we shoot in Lake Tahoe, there’s no air conditioning. The biggest challenge was being dressed in the clothes and the heat.
#She's all that nickelodeon movie#
How do you shoot a Christmas movie when there are fires and it’s summer? But we got it done and it was beautiful and I’m really proud of it. And because of COVID we had a lot of restrictions and a lot of challenges in that department. We didn’t get to showcase the vistas and stuff we really wanted to see. It was probably one of the most challenging movies I’ve been on, mainly because of the heat wave and the fires in Montana. I spoke with Hart about what it was like to make that show in that era-complete with fourth-wall breaking, dream sequences, pet alligators, and a best friend who preferred climbing in through her window rather than walking in through her door-and passed along some questions that my very excited Ringer teammates demanded I ask when they found out about this interview. If everything old is new again in pop culture and fashion, Clarissa offered a timeless snapshot of the early- to mid-’90s on both fronts. But while Clarissa wrapped for good in 1994 after a total of 65 episodes, the show remained popular and gained a new audience when Nickelodeon began re-airing episodes in 2011. The Best Nickelodeon Character Bracket: The Elite Eight A Complete Statistical Breakdown of the ‘Zoey 101’ Basketball Game What’s in a Nicktoon? How Nickelodeon Developed Its Eclectic AnimationĬlarissa debuted in 1991, and by the summer of 1992, it was the unofficial main event to the network’s popular Saturday night lineup known as SNICK, a two-hour block of targeted programming that kept tweens and teens entertained for more than a decade. Double Dare and You Can’t Do That on Television were the two big shows that I watched.” And Nickelodeon was known as a game-show network.
“At the time, cable was so new,” Hart said about starring in Nickelodeon’s early-’90s teen comedy Clarissa Explains It All. It was a pretty busy time for Hart, but when she called, she was happy enough to discuss a different busy time in her life, a period she remembers fondly-even if she went through it as a teenager, and never expected so many other people to remember it fondly decades later. She had just finished shooting that week, and Hart had several other interviews lined up to promote the film. On the day we recently spoke, Hart spent much of the morning doing publicity for her forthcoming Lifetime holiday movie, Mistletoe in Montana. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing essays, features, and interviews to get at the heart of what made Nick so dang fun-and now so nostalgic.īefore she could talk about her past, Melissa Joan Hart first had to discuss her present. To mark the anniversary, The Ringer is looking back at Nick’s best-ever characters and the legacy of the network as a whole. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of “Nicktoons,” Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large. Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series.