It was typed up and posted to the ``clarissa'' mailing list by Jim Davis
<jdavis@cs.arizona.edu>
and converted to HTML by Donald Lancon, Jr.
<dcljr@stat.tamu.edu>.
Clarissa Darling, the darling of Nick at Nite [sic], starts her fourth season Saturday night with a kiss she can't explain.
Clarissa Explains it All flirts with romance as the 15- or 16-year old character faces a new dilemma:
Will Sam the boy friend become Sam the boyfriend?
There's no dilemma for star Melissa Joan Hart, 17 and maturing fast. She'll shoot 65 episodes to keep the hit alive even if she ages out of the part.
``Clarissa knows what she wants but sometimes she gets confused about things. She's not a cardboard cut-out cheerleader. She's a real teen-ager,'' Hart says.
Just like Hart, despite a resume many adults would envy. She's played Broadway in The Crucible and is the youngest member of New York's Circle Repertory Lab Company. Since age 4, she's logged dozens of commericals and TV guest spots.
Saturday, Hart plays a lead role in Who's Afraid of the Dark [sic!], the last show in Nick at Night's [sigh] lineup.
But Clarissa -- spouting advice, dashing off lists and games on her bedroom computer, sweetly herding her hapless parents and smarty-pants Ferguson -- is Hart's star vehicle.
Eve Grossman White, age 7, is regular viewer of Clarissa and chatted with star Melissa Joan Hart about Clarissa and the new book, Clarissa's All-in-One Perfect Complete Book of Everything Important (Grosset & Dunlap, $2.95) by Mitchell Kriegman and Mollie Fermaglich.
Q: What did you contribute to the Clarissa book?
Stuff in `Words to Live By' that is signed `Unknown'. A sampling: ``As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live more and more''. ``Embarassment is my least favorite emotion.''Q: What do you do in your spare time?Hart adds Shirley Temple to the list of ``All-time Cool Girls''. She collects memorabilia and, ``I watch a lot of Shirley Temple movies but I can't tap dance as well as she could.''
``I only get one day off a week. I try to sleep in and go to the movies and the beach and the pool.'' During winter months shooting at Universal Studios in Florida, her buddies come from the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club and off-camera crew of Clarissa.Q: Do you want to be an actress when you grow up?
``Yeah. Hopefully, I can work my schedule around college,'' says Hart, who's eying New York University. This year she's doing a Nickelodeon internship in TV and film production.Q: What happens if you don't agree with your scriptwriters?
So far, no problem, she says. But Hart spoke up once about Clarissa's look. ``Once Ferguson stole Clarissa's diary and ...she had to go to a yatch club to get it. The producers and wardrobe decided she should go in fancy dress. But I didn't think Clarissa would dress up. She's not trying to impress anybody. She just wants her diary back. So we compromised on jeans and a fancy shirt.''[There's a small headshot photo of Melissa with the caption ``HART: The 'Clarissa' star is a big fan of Shirley Temple.'']Clarissa always cuts up her jeans or ``paints tick-tack-toe signs on them or flowers or question marks. She likes to be different.''