Melissa Joan Hart turned down Playboy to protect family after Maxim controversy: 'Thank God'

foxnews.com:

Melissa Joan Hart shocked fans this summer when she revealed she was nearly fired from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch." The actress admitted a cover shoot with Maxim magazine, which featured her at age 23 mostly naked beneath a bedsheet, created such a controversy she was told she was in breach of contract.

Although the issue was resolved after Hart wrote an apology letter, the actress says the situation led her to turn down Playboy magazine.

It was a choice she made to protect her family. "There's a good reason why I never did like Playboy or anything like that, because when Maxim came out, my brother, who at the time was a teenager, and my father were kind of tortured by people showing — shoving it in their faces," she told Fox News Digital. "My brother in high school, all his friends go, ‘Look at your sister.’" She recalled that her brother and father questioned why she chose to do the cover. "So, when Playboy came around and asked, I was like, 'Nah.

I'm not going to do that to them.' And thank God, because now I have boys," she said of her three sons with her husband of 20 years, Mark Wilkerson. "My siblings have always been my sort of, my guiding light. … What do I want to portray for them?