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Before Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus, and Hillary Duff, Melissa Joan Hart was the original “it girl.” The actress starred on the Nickelodeon sitcom Clarissa Explains It All, where she battled her younger brother, her own overactive imagination, teenage drama, and all the trials and tribulations of growing up.

It turns out she was also battling stereotypes.

According to Hart, the executives didn’t feel the audience would buy a blonde as a smart character, so she had to win them over.

“With Clarissa, I was auditioning for that part, and they really didn’t want a blonde,” Hart says during a panel at Tampa Bay Comic Convention.

“They said, ‘We do not want a blonde for this part.’ That was their big thing. The executive producer was like, ‘I cannot have a blonde play this smart girl.’ But someone had seen me, I was doing a Broadway play at the time. Someone had seen me, I think it was his veterinarian.”

The veterinarian convinced the showrunner to give Hart an audition, and it wasn’t long before the part was hers.

“He let me come and audition and then he just kept liking my audition, and I went back three times. At one point he asked me, ‘Are you a fan of New Kids on the Block.’ They were big at the time. I said, ‘Uh, I hate them.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh no! He’s in the industry. He probably knows them.’ I think I was like 13 [laughs]. I was like, ‘He probably knows them and he’s probably their uncle. I definitely didn’t get this part.’ It turned out he really liked that I didn’t like the trendy boy band that was big at the moment.”

“He asked who I liked, and I said They Might Be Giants, and that was a little off the cuff. I don’t even think he knew who they were. That’s their poster on the wall in Clarissa’s room. I had to convince him I was cool. I had to convince the showrunner that I was cool enough to play Clarissa, and once I did that, he trusted me with other choices for her.”

According to Hart, the producers liked her taste so much that they let her make suggestions for the decorations in Clarissa’s bedroom. This helped make it feel like an authentic teenage girl’s bedroom.

It’s a shame that Nickelodeon was still buying into the dumb blonde stereotype in 1991. It turns out that Clarissa was doing more than explaining it all; she was also breaking down barriers. Not bad for a teenage girl.

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