Ready to feel old, 90s kids? Clarissa Explains It All, the teen sitcom that launched the career of Melissa Joan Hart, is turning 30 today. Based around the Darling family, Clarissa immediately became a fashion inspiration to young girls everywhere – with fans all dying to have a see-through phone in their bedrooms, and a ladder by their windows so that their best friends could drop by.
She was the OG vlogger – talking directly to the audience through the camera to discuss the essential worries of a normal teen. How annoying her brother was, the struggles of learning how to drive, what it means to discover boys.
The series, created by Mitchell Kreigman, was groundbreaking in many ways – not least of which because, until that point, there had been few shows starring teen girls, aimed at teen audiences. In fact, with the exception of Mayim Bialik comedy Blossom, which premiered less than two months before Clarissa did, it was unheard of.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Melissa, Mitchell, and producer Chris Gifford remember the series, and how it inadvertently shaped pop culture to what it is today.
‘I can’t believe it’s 30! I feel like I’m not even 30 yet, I don’t understand how the show could be,’ Melissa, now 44, told Metro.
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| Clarissa and her fabulous outfits were ahead of their time (Picture: Nickelodeon) |
‘There had been shows about women before, and it wasn’t the first female lead, but there was a big push at Nickelodeon behind the fact that it was one of the first kids’ shows to be centred around a female.
‘You go back to Mary Tyler Moore, I Love Lucy and some of the shows that were around females, but when you look at Clarissa, it was really sort of [unique].
‘Clarissa was one of these females that it wasn’t about her girlfriends, it was about her dreams or aspirations, her deep feelings behind things and just dealing with family politics.
‘I think that boys were finally okay with watching a girl, because she wasn’t talking about “girly” things. She’s smart and witty and has a best friend who’s a boy and problems with her brother and everybody can kind of relate to her.’
‘There was that feeling that girls would watch boys, but boys wouldn’t watch girls, and that was clearly not true,’ said Chris. ‘That was breaking down that barrier.’
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| The series ran for three years before ending in 1994 (Picture: Nickelodeon) |
Mitchell agreed, and said there was a lot of battling with network big wigs in order to get Clarissa to screen. ‘It was difficult,’ he said. ‘We were supposed to do something really corny – it was called Space Swap or something like that – where it was gonna be an alien daughter, a Disney kinda rip-off. So I was really glad we weren’t doing that.
‘I got to create something of my own and it just hit me that we just need a girl, and she needs to say what the hell is going on from her point of view – from the kids’ point of view and a girl point of view. Did I have hurdles? Yes I had hurdles.’
One of those hurdles, by his own admission, is the fact that he’s a man himself, writing about a teenage girl’s experience. In order to counteract that, Mitchell ensured the writing team was made up largely of women – notably Alexa Junge, who went on to work as a producer for Friends, Neena Beber, who later helped create Daria, and Suzanne Collins, now best known as the author of The Hunger Games.
‘Our head writer for most of the shows was a woman,’ said Chris, who stresses the balance was an unusual one for television. ‘I think the writing staff was about half women, half men. It wasn’t a big writing staff.
‘The crew for the most part were men, maybe a couple of women. But back then the industry was primarily men, at least below the line.’
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| Melissa admitted she was glad she wasn’t shot into stardom like Britney (Picture: Nickelodeon) |
‘I had people who said, “well, what are you writing about a girl for?” which is in some ways a legit issue, especially these days,’ Mitchell added. ‘But I had lots of women working with me. It was almost an all women top staff, and my wife at the time was an editor for Seventeen, so I had some really great role models for her.’
Prior to accepting the job which would ultimately shape her career, Melissa actually auditioned for ‘rival’ series Blossom. ‘I had just done a Broadway play where I was doing a monologue on stage as a very brave preteen girl,’ she explained. ‘It just felt like the natural next step.
‘I heard later on that they did not want a blonde to play the part, and so that’s why they had to see me so many times, but at the same time I was auditioning for Blossom to play the role of Six.
‘I remember laying in bed at night and praying and just thinking, “let God’s will be done, because I don’t know what I want”. These are both were great opportunities and these are both great characters, these are both great shows. I’m not sure what I want to do.
‘I think the right path was chosen for me.’
Melissa now has her own production company and has just finished latest sitcom, No Good Nick.
‘There was some boy band at the time, and whether it was true or not she said she didn’t like them, and that made me like her,’ Mitchell laughed. ‘She said she liked They Might Be Giants which I thought was perfect.
‘In those days, child actors were very artificial. I really wanted an authentic kid that was the age of the character, and that wasn’t done at the time. 90210 were 30 year olds, with completely developed bodies and hypersexual. I was determined to find a natural kid.
‘Melissa lit up the screen, she made everything light. She was also a consummate performer at the age of 13. She ended up being in every single scene, and was so accomplished she knew everybody’s lines, in addition to hers. She was just golden.’
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| Dora The Explorer was directly influenced by the work of Clarissa (Picture: Nick) |
‘She’s amazing,’ added Chris. ‘We would give her a monologue the morning of, she would look it over and she’d do it in one take. It was astounding.
‘She was like a great athlete – like Michael Jordan. She just owned that part. She just did a beautiful job.’
As the new show lead, Melissa was the eldest child of the Darling family, with Elizabeth Hess, and Mad Men’s Joe O’Connor playing her long-suffering parents. Jason Zimbler, who now works for HBO and as a university lecturer, played her young Republican, pain-in-the-neck brother, Ferguson. Completing the main cast was Sean O’Neal, who played Clarissa’s best friend, Sam – the doting best friend who was a rare example of platonic male/female friendship on screen.
It was something that Mitchell says was largely deliberate, with the exception of one episode where Sam is considering asking Clarissa out.
‘Melissa lit up the screen, she made everything light… She was just golden.’
‘I think you had to give the audience a little bit,’ said Melissa. ‘Everybody kind of wanted to see that happen for a second, but really it was just a platonic friendship and it was a very safe friendship and one they could really rely on each other.
‘He wasn’t unlike a girlfriend for her, you know, he was someone she could confide in or she could tell her secrets and dreams too and without any judgement.
‘But I think in Mitchell’s mind he always wanted to kind of get them together.’
‘There was no sexual judgmental quality to this series, there was a non-gender bias and it felt like it was safe for someone, sex wasn’t being thrown at you,’ Mitchell said.
‘So maybe all those things sound safe, but the truth was I was really interested in things that were really the meat and potatoes of what it’s like to be a kid.’
While the Clarissa series ended in 1994, Mitchell has continued to revive the character in different ways – including 2015 novel Things I Can’t Explain, where the leading lady and her best friend actually did confront their feelings about each other after so many years.
A pilot for a spin-off show called Clarissa Now was shot by CBS in 1995, but unfortunately wasn't picked up for a full series (the pilot can be watched here).
There was also a reboot in the works at one point – which unceremoniously stalled just before shooting as the network didn’t appreciate Clarissa continuing to talk to camera.
‘I had written the script of her grown-up in this newsroom,’ Mitchell reveals.
‘I had an amazing cast, finally I had a diverse cast. I had talking to the camera still, and the graphs, and fantasies and graphics.
‘After writing it and building the set – which cost them at least £100,000 – and casting the whole thing, I get this phone call saying, “we’re gonna hire another writer to write the whole thing over again”.
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| The show ‘proved that boys would watch girls’ despite previous thought (Picture: Nickelodeon) |
‘I’m saying, “Why?” and they said “well we can’t have all that talking to camera”. Those graphics, those fantasies – that works on cable for kids but it won’t work for adults?
‘I have very high standards for talking to camera. Fleabag is really good. That’s why I wince whenever I see Fleabag.’
The character’s influence definitely lived on though – most notably in Chris’s next project, the kids TV juggernaut that is Dora The Explorer. ‘The way we direct Dora to camera, that was something I took [from Clarissa],’ he said. ‘The fact that boys would watch girls, even preschool shows struggle with that.
‘If you’re going to talk to the audience, you make sure it counts. You make a contract with the viewer that if you’re going to ask for their help, like Clarissa and Dora, they’re going to succeed. They’re not gonna fail.
‘When Clarissa would turn to camera, you knew this was going to be good. With Dora, the kids are like, “Okay, this is going to be good”. It’s either going to be funny, or it’s going to be surprising – it’s going to have some juice to it.
‘That was a key piece that resonated for me from Clarissa.’
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| Clarissa would have daily struggles with her brother, parents and best friend Sam (Picture: Nickelodeon) |
Despite previous setbacks, Mitchell is now determined to one day revive Clarissa, and bring her up to date with a family of her own – and Melissa is on board.
‘Of all my series, I would love to go back to that one the most,’ she said. ‘I feel like there is a lot that was unsaid, and that there could be in continuation.
‘I feel like Sabrina [the Teenage Witch] we wrapped it up pretty nicely and I wouldn’t want to mess with the memory of that, but Clarissa is the one that I would go back to and see what happened.
‘I don’t know, we’ve flirted with the idea. Mitchell and I have come up with numerous different takes on it, and presented it to Nickelodeon, who was looking at it but then things kind of got lost.
‘It’s been years now since it’s been brought up so I don’t think it’s in the stars. But never say never. If it comes back around and it’s a great idea, then we’ll do it.’
‘Here’s what’s super cool right now is that we all talk to the camera,’ said Mitchell. ‘Think about what Clarissa was doing, she’d be in her room talking to camera, and we’d watch her as she did her stuff. You know, like her phone. She’d go to an earlier episode of her life, scrolling – she’d write on the screen, like TikTok and Snapchat.’
‘I’m planning on [reviving] it,’ he continued. ‘At this point, I think there’s so many reasons for the show to exist, and whether a girl or a boy or trans or multiracial, there’s still so many reasons for a kid to explain things in the world.
‘Here’s what I adore about the history of Clarissa, it was conscious to make it appeal to boys and girls, to be non-gender biased. I love that there are people of all kinds, who have come up to me and say “you made my childhood”. So many of them are different and unique and of different races and different backgrounds, male and female.
‘I recently talked to someone who’s trans and they said “wow I love Clarissa. Clarissa really made me comfortable with who I am”. So, tell me. Isn’t there a demand for that right now?
‘Wouldn’t that be a fantastic show that was fully of the moment that did what that show did and it’s time? ‘We need to do that again. We’ll probably always need to do that. But that’s me.’
From Spin:
‘It Was Their Childhood’: Looking Back on 30 Years of Clarissa Explains It All
For the show's 30th birthday, its creator discusses it all
Believe it or not, it’s been 30 years since Clarissa Explains It All first aired. For five seasons, Melissa Joan Hart and the rest of the cast would set the standard for Nickelodeon’s programming in the ‘90s and define the entire childhood of a generation now known as millennials.
But while the show might’ve been one of the biggest hits of the now-iconic era for the network, it’s possible that its lasting impact is only just beginning. With several episodes now on Paramount+ (because apparently they’re opposed to putting the entirety of anything on the new streaming service for some unknown reason), new and future generations are likely about to discover Clarissa Darling and her unique takes on the world for the first time.
While the technology in the show may be outdated, a lot of the overarching themes and subject matter are more relevant today than ever. SPIN sat down with show creator Mitchell Kriegman via Zoom to get his take on Clarissa’s legacy and what it all means today.
SPIN: Looking back 30 years later on Clarissa Explains It All, what do you think it is about it that makes it hold up so well?
Mitchell Kriegman: Well, it’s just screaming to be reinterpreted yet again. There are so many things about it that have been either prophetic or just slightly aware of something before other people were aware of it — especially stuff about gender bias and some of the more intuitive parts of it, like the way she talks to the camera. The idea that she would talk to the camera and then be in a scene — where we could put graphics on the screen even as she’s talking to somebody — we can all do that with our phones now. There’s so many aspects of that awareness she had in the way she communicated that are really subtle, but they’re exactly what we do now.
What was it like to be a part of that huge wave of live-action shows that really shaped Nickelodeon in the ‘90s?
Well, Clarissa was kind of the beginning of live-action shows like that, and it was the peak of Nickelodeon. I worked on a lot of the animation too, like Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats, and [Rocco’s Modern Life], and I think Clarissa was really a statement of what Nickelodeon was. It was Nickelodeon’s mission to be inclusive and to the voice of kids — unlike MTV, which was the voice of the music business in a lot of ways. It was more than just regular TV for kids. It was a sort of a stake in who they would be in the future. We had seen a lot of things that were made for kids, and I really wanted to do something that was just authentic for that set of human beings. It wasn’t a show that was talking down in any way, but it was speaking from their point of view.
I think in a lot of ways, you’re not going to quite see something like [that era of Nickelodeon] ever again. I think that something good could happen, but by and large it’s hard to imagine it happening again. That was really the rise of an audience, and streaming doesn’t quite have that kind of energy for kids. I think one of the things that people experience with Clarissa is that it’s not just a show they remember, but it was their childhood.
When you and the cast and crew were working on it, did you know it was going to be something special? How did it feel while you were working on it?
I’m just grateful that I was there in the moment to be able to do it, as I was making a lot of it up as I went along because I just had a bunch of ideas that I wanted to see happen. I was not the most sophisticated kind of conveyor of those ideas at the time, but I got better at it, and it was exciting to be in that moment with all those people working on Nickelodeon.
It was kind of an instant hit — relative to the rest of the business — for a while, and then it kind of went away. I know it was very hard on all of the actors, because it’s not like now where you have social media and you know who your fans are. They did this show, and although it was extremely successful, it wasn’t in a way that they could tangibly feel before the show was over. Some of them dropped out of the business before they realized it was a success. Nickelodeon wouldn’t let us continue doing these episodes while these kids grow up, so they got disconnected from their success. It’s a shame, because it’s not like now, where you do an episode, tweet about it, post about it, and everyone knows about it immediately.
For me, I’ve just always done another show, I just always keep doing shows now. It’s all about what I can do now and what I can do next. It’s definitely one of the things that I’ve worked on that stands out to me, and I’m grateful every time someone remembers the show. When I was a kid, there was this goofy show that was always on called Leave It to Beaver, and I was always hoping that Clarissa could be doing the same — not aesthetically, but functionally. It’s the same kind of show that could be on forever.
Why do you think Clarissa as a character has been more relatable than a lot of the other protagonists of kids shows?
I think one of the things that separated Clarissa from the shows that came after was that Clarissa didn’t want to be a star. She just wanted to be a star in her own life. It was about being yourself. When you read what Miley Cyrus now says about her experience on her show, you know it wasn’t about being yourself. Shows like that were about being some successful, famous something, and I don’t think Clarissa would even take that seriously. I think she was also a little bit like Bugs Bunny in my mind, in that she always had a plan, and if that plan didn’t work, then she had another plan. She never failed, because she always had another way of doing things.
And aside from Clarissa, it always seemed like the supporting characters were all really thought out as well.
It was interesting because when they first tested the pilot, it actually came back that the parents weren’t strong enough. It became an interesting realization that kids don’t want to agree with the parents necessarily, but they want real parents there to bump up against. Clarissa’s parents are pretty goofy, but at the time it was created, people wanted to have parents who were complete goofballs. We made sure they were more substantial after that process, and the actors were terrific. The mom was someone that you felt like “I’d like to know that mom,” as opposed to a kind of June Cleaver that was inaccessible.
Seeing as you wrote the book Things I Can’t Explain as a bit of a sequel to the show, what would you want to see as Clarissa’s lasting legacy at this point?
Well, the thing is that we always need a kid to explain it all, because a kid is in the moment. I mean, Amanda Gorman isn’t a kid — she’s a young adult in her 20s — but she was able to explain things to us. Greta Thunberg explains things to us. There are all of these young figures who explain it to the rest of us, and the older people need that kid and that voice. It could be anybody, but it’s a kid’s voice explaining things that is really compelling. That’s the core essence of Clarissa, and I think it should be back more than ever because they can explain things better than the rest of us. As adults, we’re always remembering what things were. We’re living the way we used to live and trying to keep it together as much as it used to be, and we’re understanding the world through that lens and that filter. Whereas a kid is like “Oh, right now, this is what’s going on.” I’ve done my best to try to listen to that kid anywhere I’ve encountered in my work or in my life with my children, and I’d love to see that kid explaining it all again — and explaining it with the tools that are right now. I think that’s forever. That’s not just a show from the ‘90s.
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