Dramatic Roles Were ‘Hard’ After Years on Nickelodeon
Melissa Joan Hart said it was “hard” for her to take on more serious roles after years on Nickelodeon.
The actress, who has been in the entertainment industry for more than three decades, recently told People magazine that she now likes to “mix it up” when choosing characters and genres, but that it took some time to get to this point.
“I love doing these true crime movies because I never trusted myself to do drama when I was younger,” Hart said. “I did, when I was really young, I was actually in one of the episodes of The Equalizer, when I was about seven years old … and did some other dramatic roles — that was easy for me when I was a child. But then, as I got more comfortable with comedy, it was harder for me to flip into drama.”
The Melissa & Joey alum admitted she found comfort in her comedic skills after years of starring in kids’ TV shows, including her Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All from 1991 to 1994 and then Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
“Comedy is so much about gesturing and big facial expressions, especially on Nickelodeon. When you learn Nickelodeon acting, it’s like, do you want look number one, number two, or number three?,” Hart explained, displaying three different facial expressions. “You are trying to do the different looks and make it big.”
She continued, “And then taking it down for drama was a real learning curve for me again. So it’s been really interesting to dive more into the dramatic stuff and trust myself with it.”
Hart’s latest movie, Lifetime’s The Bad Guardian, follows a woman, Leigh Delgado (Hart), who tries to save her father from a corrupt and greedy court-appointed guardian.
