Did 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch's' Melissa Joan Hart and Nate Richert Date IRL? (EXCLUSIVE)
Updated Jan. 19 2021, 4:27 p.m. ET
Between Full House's DJ and Steve, Boy Meets World's Cory and Topanga, and That '70s Show's Jackie and Hyde, '90s teen sitcoms were filled with some truly incredible couples. But one of the best duos — hands down — was Sabrina and Harvey on Nickelodeon's Sabrina the Teenage Witch. They truly made for a magical pairing, if you catch our drift.
And while the on-screen romance unfortunately gave us wildly unrealistic ideas about what high school dating would really be like, we can't help but wonder if there was any authentic chemistry between the two actors off-screen. We caught up with the series' star, Melissa Joan Hart, while she was promoting the Lunchables' new rewards program — she spilled the tea about the extent of her relationship with the actor behind Harvey's character, Nate Richert, and her answer will surprise you.
Did Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina Spellman) and Nate Richert (Harvey Kinkle) date in real life?
When the first episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch aired, Melissa Joan Hart was 20 years old, and Nate Richert was a mere 22. As two adorable young actors playing a young teenage couple in a hit '90s series, it would come as no surprise if the two brought their on-screen romance off-set. However, that apparently wasn't the case. When we asked Melissa Joan Hart via phone if she and Nate ever had authentic chemistry, she thought about it and giggled.
"You know what’s funny? I think you’re the first person to ever ask that," Hart tells us, laughing. "You’d think that would be an obvious question! No, we did not. I think I probably crushed on him a little bit, but he was dating a girl on a TV show across the way from us at Universal Studios our first season — he started dating her pretty early on — and I had a boyfriend when we first started."
"[Nate's girlfriend] came on the show, she became my best friend, she was on the show for four years — Lindsey Sloan who played Valerie — and they dated for a long time. And then he was kind of off the show for a few seasons...
"So he was kind of gone a lot toward the end, and I think at that point, he had broken up with Lindsey," she explains. "But, Lindsey is one of my best friends so I could never date him," she says.
But the cast of 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' still stays in touch, 18 years later.
Beyond Nate and Melissa, the cast of the beloved series appeared to have fantastic chemistry all-around, and 18 years after the series ended, the cast and crew still apparently make a point to see each other regularly.
"We actually [keep in touch] now a lot more now than we used to," Hart tells us. "Right before the lockdown happened, I went with two of the cast members to Liverpool for Comic-Con. It was so much fun!"
"And in February of last year, we had a whole cast and crew reunion. I threw a little party at a coffee shop that was closed down for the evening, and people flew in from Canada and Texas and New York just to get together for a few hours, just to get together for our glory days of Sabrina — it was so much fun. It's really fun to see those people.
"Also, when [the Sabrina reboot] first launched two years ago, Netflix had us do a viewing of it. So, I watched it and I think you can find it on YouTube, with me, the boy who played Harvey [in the reboot], the two aunts, and Nate, and we kind of commented on it. I haven’t watched a whole episode, but it’s a very different show, which I’m very happy about — it’s so different you can’t even compare them," she recalls.
Check out the full video, below.
While we're totally Hart-broken that Sabrina and Harvey's romance didn't carry on off-screen, we're thrilled that the entire cast and crew of Sabrina the Teenage Witch remained friends... Fingers crossed for a televised reunion.
