Melissa Joan Hart Reveals Premise of Failed ‘Clarissa’ Revival

Way, way back in 2018, we heard that Nickelodeon was pursuing a reboot of its classic kids sitcom Clarissa Explains It All, which and launched Melissa Joan Hart to teen stardom. (This was before Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.) There’s a post in the ScreenCrush archives from March of that year, stating that original Clarissa creator Mitchell Kriegman and Hart were both in talks for a show about “Hart’s Clarissa Darling as the family’s mother.”

But nothing ever came of it, even though Nickelodeon and its parent company, Paramount, have become increasingly obsessed with its vintage Nick catalog because of its streaming platform, Paramount+. The project seems to be dead, to the point that Hart revealed the premise of the failed revival in a recent interview.

Hart told Insider that show would have been about an adult Clarissa who “is divorced and moving to California with her two kids and living on the beach in California with her aunt.” She also added “I don’t know. It wasn’t my favorite way in.”

READ MORE: A Slew of Vintage Nickelodeon Shows Are Now on Paramount+

The original Clarissa produced 65 episodes from 1991 to 1994, and was one of the channel’s signature live-action series of its time, notable for Hart’s fourth-wall breaking performance — a sort of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off from a female perspective.

Hart also said in the interview, despite the issues with that 2018 attempt, she would prefer to revive Clarissa to her other nostalgic kidcom classic, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. “I do feel like Sabrina wrapped up really nicely with her riding off on the motorcycle with Harvey. I think that ending on Sabrina was so iconic that I don’t want to go back and try to recreate that and have another good ending.”

You can watch the vintage episodes of Clarissa Explains It All on Paramount+.

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