Melissa Joan Hart Says The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina “Doesn’t Really Appeal” to Her

For millennials and above, the Archie Comics character Sabrina Spellman is most closely linked to Melissa Joan Hart. The teen actress played her on ABC’s Sabrina, the Teenage Witch from 1996 to 2003, well before Netflix was a household name. These days, though, it’s Kiernan Shipka whose name most frequently trails Sabrina, thanks the streaming service’s reboot, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. When Hart was recently asked whether she watches the new generation of Sabrina, she had a surprising answer.

“I don’t think it really appeals to me,” she told E! News. The reason why? Hart says she and her family are out of the range of the show’s demographic. “I watched a little with Netflix. We did a social media campaign where I watched some of the episodes. But I don’t think it really appeals to me. My kids are a little too young for it and I’m too old for it.”

Hart is fully happy that the show exists, though. “I love the fact that the character lives on,” she said, echoing her previous comments along those lines. Last fall, for instance, she told E! that she is a fan of there being different generational takes on the classic character, who was first introduced in October 1962 in the Archie comic book series. “I think it’s great,” she said of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. “It’s kind of like a sisterhood when you play the same characters, I think, and probably the way the James Bond guys feel, or something, different level, but you know. But I think it’s great, you know, they are doing something very different. I think if the shows were similar, I might be a little, like, ‘Oh, that hurts.’ But it’s totally different.”

To share her love for Shipka, Hart gave the 19-year-old some advice in a promotional video for Netflix.“So tomorrow, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina drops on Netflix,” Hart said last October. “And I just wanted to send my best witches to Kiernan Shipka, aka the new Sabrina Spellman. By the way, from one Sabrina to the other…if you’re ever given a choice between a broom and a vacuum, choose the vacuum.”