Melissa Joan Hart explains how 'Clarissa Explains It All' theme song led to a family

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...nickname that lives on to this day

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebri...027eb7ce2&ei=9

The memorable theme led to a lasting inside joke for Hart and her family

Melissa Joan Hart owes her family nickname to her breakthrough role.

The actress, 49, threw it back to Clarissa Explains It All in a recent Instagram post discussing the show's catchy theme song.

"Fun fact: My little sisters called me 'Nana' when they were little because of this theme song," which sings "na na na na na na" in lieu of lyrics.

The tune stuck, and "Now my nieces and nephews all call me Auntie Nana," she shared.

In November, Hart appeared on Tori Spelling's misSPELLING podcast, telling guest host Elisa Donovan how auditioning for her Nickelodeon series was "pretty tedious."

"I know I auditioned like three times, and at the same time, I'm auditioning for Blossom, for the role of Six," she shared.

"So I think I went three times to each audition ... when I got a callback for something — there's the audition, the callback and like a second callback — I would always wear the same thing. Because it was like, was good luck."

"I had like a pink t-shirt on and these like acid-washed overalls. And turns out the producer really liked pink and blue, so it was, like, pink and blue," she continued.

"But apparently, he watched the two auditions side-by-side, and my strap fell off at the same point. And like, I lifted it back up in like three different places in the audition ... the strap fell off and I lifted it back up. And it was years later that he asked me, he goes, 'You planned that, didn't you?' He thought I was like, so brilliant. He thought I was so well planned, at 12 years old."

Hart went on to play Clarissa for five seasons from 1991 to 1994. It was followed up by another big role, as Sabrina Spellman on Sabrina the Teenage Witch from 1996 to 2003.

Speaking to PEOPLE at 90s Con in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2024, Hart — who shares sons Mason, Braydon and Tucker with husband Mark Wilkerson — recalled her time on the show and getting to play the iconic Clarissa Darling.

“That was a really special time,” Hart shared. “It was a lot of hard work… I had a lot of monologues, [the] scenes were long and we had to do them all as a live show even though it wasn't a live show. It was really complicated to get it right."

“I had so much fun, and I knew she was a special character,” Hart admitted, adding that she thought the series — which delved into everything from dating to how to deal with annoying little brothers — overall was “wonderful.”