“I know people think he’s dreamy”: Melissa Joan Hart Thought her On Screen Kiss with One Tree Hill Star was ‘Awkward’, Admitted She Never Found Him Attractive
Melissa Joan Hart, Nickelodeon star of the 90s show known for starring in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, once revealed that she didn’t enjoy a particular on-screen kiss on the show. It was with One Tree Hil Star James Van Der Beek. The actress mentioned that she didn’t find Van Der Beek attractive and hated doing that smooching scene with him. Interestingly, the feelings were mutual.
Melissa Joan Hart on Kissing James Van Der Beek
Melissa Joan Hart kissed James Van Der Beek and very much didn’t like it. The pair met while shooting the 1191 hit Nickelodeon show Clarissa Explains It All. Hart starred as the lead on the show while Van Der Beek had a smaller role. He played a drummer named Paulie who bumps into Clarissa while she’s dressed as her alter-ego Jade. When Hart’s character reveals her true identity to Paulie, she says she would understand if he wouldn’t ever want to speak to her again. The pair share a kiss after this heartwarming exchange.
It was the first on-screen kiss for both of them. And they both didn’t enjoy it very much. In her 2013 memoir titled Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life, the Sabrina the Teenage Witch actress recounted her unpleasant experience of how the kiss came to be.
She wrote that just before the scene, the actor told her that his girlfriend wouldn’t like them kissing and that made an already uncomfortable scene worse for her. Moreover, she says never found the Dawson’s Creek artist attractive.
“Oh, come on. I know people think he’s dreamy, but I never got the appeal. This was five years before he began getting naked with most of the cast on ‘Dawson’s Creek.'”
Jokingly, Hart expressed that the experience ruined kissing scenes for her forever,
“To this day, I still have a small panic attack — call it PTSKD, post-traumatic screen-kiss disorder — when I read a kissing scene in a script.”
James Van Der Beek Didn’t Like It Either
The One Tree Hill finally revealed his side of the story. And the feeling of derision is mutual. But the actor attributed it to them being young. He told in an interview:
“All on-screen kisses are awkward, especially at that age. My gosh, how old were we? We were teenagers. I was 16 at that point, but yeah.”
For different reasons, there was reluctance to shoot the scene from both parties. This was because they both were teenagers and dating people in their real lives. Bringing to light the point Van Der Beek touched on that they weren’t experienced enough or mature enough to laugh it off.
Source: Insider
