Melissa Joan Hart leads 'Sabrina' cast to Beverly for 30th anniversary
The sitcom's original cast members will perform at The Cabot on Halloween before heading to Providence for the next leg of their national tour.
By Andrew Yang ·
Melissa Joan Hart and her former 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' costars will perform a live reunion show in Beverly, Massachusetts, on Saturday, October 31. The event marks the 30th anniversary of the sitcom and serves as the opening date for a multi-city tour. Hart, who is 50, described the Massachusetts stop as the ideal location to launch the celebration.
The performance will take place at The Cabot, located at 286 Cabot Street. Tickets for the Halloween event start at $49.50. The show will include skits, music, and interactive segments with the audience. Hart teased that the group will hold auditions for audience members to mimic Salem, the talking cat from the series.
Joining Hart on stage are Beth Broderick, Elisa Donovan, Jenna Leigh Green, David Lascher, Nate Richert, and Caroline Rhea. Rhea, who played Sabrina's aunt Hilda, played a key role in selecting Beverly as the tour's first stop. Hart noted that Rhea has been visiting Salem frequently and has become embedded in the local community. The cast will then travel to Providence's Uptown Theater on Sunday, October 26, for the next performance.
Hart credited her mother, Paula, with creating the concept for the show. In 1994, while Hart's previous series 'Clarissa Explains It All' was concluding, Paula received a copy of the 'Sabrina' comic book. She used her connection to Viacom to pitch the character as a made-for-TV movie. Hart edited footage from that 1996 Showtime pilot to create a sizzle reel, which she used to sell the series to networks. The project eventually secured a spot in ABC's TGIF time slot.
The series premiered in the fall of 1996. Several cast members from the pilot movie did not return for the television series. Caroline Rhea replaced Sherry Miller as aunt Hilda, while Beth Broderick took over the role of aunt Zelda from Charlene Fernetz. Ryan Reynolds, who played the character Seth in the movie, did not appear in the TV version. The show aired for seven seasons, moving from ABC to the WB.
The sitcom faced stiff competition upon its launch, airing against the 'Clueless' TV series. By the end of the second season, the network ordered 52 additional episodes, signaling the show's commercial success. The series became a staple of the 1990s comedy landscape, featuring cameos from major stars. Actors such as Dick Van Dyke, Raquel Welch, and Johnny Mathis appeared on the show. Music acts including The Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, and The Monkees also made guest appearances.
Hart stated that the show allowed her to meet many cultural icons. She recalled visiting Shirley Temple at her home after the actress agreed to a brief visit. Hart believes the current wave of nostalgia for the 1990s stems from it being the last era before widespread digital privacy loss. She noted that younger generations are drawn to the simplicity of that time, a sentiment reflected in the strong turnout for recent fan conventions.
The reunion tour originated from a single event held in Chicago over the summer. Hart said the Chicago show was a major success, prompting the cast to expand the format into a national tour. The group aims to bring the specific energy of the show directly to fans in a larger scale than previous appearances. The Beverly performance is the first of several stops planned across the country.
