Melissa Joan Hart Turned Down Playboy to Protect Her Family From More Mockery After Maxim Drama

For Melissa Joan Hart, one of her biggest career decisions came with a hefty price — and her family paid dearly for it.

On Monday, November 17, the Sabrina the Teenage Witch star, 49, revealed on the Sibling Revelry podcast that she once rejected a high-paying Playboy offer for a deeply personal reason: She couldn’t put her loved ones through the humiliation in the wake of her scandalous Maxim feature.

Hart shared that the harshest fallout from her infamous 1999 Maxim cover — a lingerie shoot that nearly cost her her Sabrina job and sparked chaos behind the scenes — hit her father and younger brother, Brian. According to her, the pair were “tortured by people at work going, ‘Look at your daughter. Look at your sister.’ I couldn’t do that to them again.”

The actress said Playboy approached her soon after the Maxim issue came out and offered her serious money, but her decision was clear. “I was like, ‘I can’t do it because I don’t want my brother to be hurt by that,’” she explained.

Still, Hart says the thought did cross her mind: “I would have been willing to do it because I was like, I’m not ashamed of my body. I’m fine with that.”

Now a mom of three boys — Mason, 19, Braydon, 17, and Tucker, 12 — Hart added that she’s relieved Playboy pictures of her don’t exist.

“I don’t need those images out there for them,” she added.