Melissa Joan Hart Still Feels ‘Really Guilty’ for Taking Underage Britney Spears to Her First Nightclub

Melissa Joan Hart, the star of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, recently opened up about her longstanding guilt over taking underage Britney Spears to her first nightclub. Hart confessed during an interview with Entertainment Tonight, reflecting on her and the pop icon’s early days in the spotlight. In 1999, both Hart and Spears were promoting the teen romance film, Drive Me Crazy, in which Hart starred alongside Adrian Grenier. The film was named after Spears’ hit single, You Drive Me Crazy, which also featured Hart and Grenier in its music video. That same year, Spears also made a cameo on Hart’s show.

As per Daily Mail, she recalled the intense media attention that surrounded Spears. She shared, “Britney and I got to do a lot of press together. And we had a lot of fun together during this time. I saw that she was just surrounded by people, never able to break free. And I was like, ‘Hey want to come?’ I would go to a club every night — I love dancing and I loved going out, but I also knew to be responsible and, like, when to stop.”

Entertainment Weekly reported that Hart admitted, “She was underage and young and — but I [was] just like, ‘Let's go out. We're just gonna go out and have some fun.’ I feel really guilty about that still to this day because I should have known better, being a big sister. So I went to her hotel and I invited her to come out with me and we went to a club. She was underage so I snuck her in through the back door and we did a little dancing and then people sort of swarmed on top of her and then she got stuck at a table hanging out with people, chit-chatting. And I was like, ‘I've got to go to work tomorrow can I go?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, go I am good. They will get me home.’”

In subsequent years, Spears’ life took a shocking turn. She struggled with partying in the early 2000s and her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, admitted to drinking with her mom from an early age. She struggled with mental health issues in the face of growing public scrutiny, which resulted in her being placed under a conservatorship in 2008. Thereafter, her life was largely controlled by her father Jamie. Spears in 2021, testified about the treatment she faced under the conservatorship. Meanwhile, Hart and Spears haven't been in much contact over the years, although Hart shared that she got the chance to reconnect with her during her Las Vegas residency. She revealed, "I saw her when she was doing her Vegas residency a few years back, but it was a quick hello backstage and that was it."