‘I just need to lie down for a minute’

A film featuring Melissa Joan Hart as a grandmother recently led to many on social media to question if the Sabrina The Teenage Witch star was the appropriate age to play such a character.

The 47-year-old actress – who claimed she encountered the Holy Spirit – could be seen portraying grandma Ella in Would You Kill for Me? The Mary Bailey Story which premiered on the Lifetime Network back in October.

A clip circulating on social media recently led many fans to go into a meltdown over the role with many questioning if she was even old enough to be the mother of someone who was a mother.

One user wrote: ‘Melissa Joan Hart is four years older than me and getting cast as a grandma so I just need to lie down for a minute.’

Another said: ‘I just saw a clip of a movie where Melissa Joan Hart was playing a grandma and when i tell you my brain said “can not compute ” no way I’m that old.’

Another social media user brought up her signature role in Sabrina The Teenage Witch which aired from 1996 to 2003.

They wrote: ‘If Melissa Joan Hart isn’t a Teenaged witch, how old are we supposed to be??’ 

In the upcoming lifetime film she plays mother to grandmother to the titular character Mary Bailey who is played by Presley Allard.

It is based on a true story of an 11-year-old who shot and killed her abusive stepfather at the request of her mother, Pricilla Wyers.

The synopsis of the film according to IMDB is: ‘After a lifetime of abuse from the same man, three women – a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter – conspire to get rid of him once and for all.’

Meanwhile back in August, Melissa revealed that she experienced a ‘born again’ moment and encountered the Holy Spirit.

The Sabrina The Teenage Witch star said that praying deepened her faith when she started reading and studying the Bible.

Melissa told Christian Post: ‘I did have a born again, Holy Spirit moment. I never really understood the Holy Spirit or the Trinity in a sense. One day, we were in Bible study and it just hit, like the Holy Spirit made sense to me all of a sudden!

‘One day, I just felt it and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s the Holy Spirit talking to me. I get it now.”

‘Like a lightning bolt just hit me and I was like, “The Holy Spirit!” I don’t know why it just hit me and I got it. Then I better understood the Trinity and all that.’ 

She also recalled her ‘born again’ moment and how she has always felt that she has ‘walked with God’.

‘Everyone’s always talking about their moment of coming to Jesus or their moment of being born again’, she said. ‘I feel like I’ve always walked with God, it’s just gotten deeper and closer and more fulfilling.’

She added that her husband had helped her with her prayers. 

Melissa has been married to Mark Wilkerson since 2003 and the couple share sons Mason, 17, Braydon, 15 and Tucker, 10.

She recently revealed that she was nearly fired from her role on the TV show Sabrina The Teenage Witch because she posed topless and in her undies at the age of 23 for a Maxim cover in October 1999.

During an episode of the Pod Meets World podcast the actress shared she was blindsided with the news that she was being axed from the show, in which she played the title character, after participating in a photoshoot.

The performer, who recently attended a SAG-AFTRA rally in New York, then expressed that the controversy surrounding magazine cover ended up boosting the success of another one of her projects.

Melissa began by speaking about posing for a photo with Britney Spears on what she described as ‘the worst day of my life’ at the time.

She recalled: ‘My lawyer shows up and goes, “You did a photoshoot for Maxim magazine?” I’m like, “Yes, I did.” They’re like, “Well, you’re being sued and fired from your show, so don’t talk to the press. Don’t do anything.”‘ 

The cover for the magazine featured a headline that read ‘Sabrina, Your Favorite Witch Without a Stich!’

The usage of the character’s name violated a clause in Hart’s contract with Archie Comics, under which she was never to portray the teenage witch naked.

She stated that ‘so, here they were thinking I’m in breach because I’m playing the character. No, that was supposed to be me promoting [Drive Me Crazy].’

The actress also remarked that she only did ‘whatever my publicist told me to do at the photo shoot. Like I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear’

The performer also expressed that she did not expect to have her role on Sabrina referenced in the magazine.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be a character. I had no control over what they wrote on the cover,’ she said.

Melissa explained that she defused the situation by writing a letter of apology, after which she was able to keep her role as Sabrina.