Elisa Donovan, 50, is known for playing characters like Amber from Clueless, Ginger from Beverly Hills, 90210 and Morgan from Sabrina the Teenage Witch. And while the ditzy and tough to get along with characters were ones fans loved to hate, she’s thankful to have played them. “When you’re lucky enough to work on a TV series, you know that it’s going to end,” Elisa told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY while promoting her new book, Wake Me When You Leave, out June 8. “With Clueless, it was amazing because we did three seasons and that was quite enough for everybody. 90210, I only did a season.”
But with triumph can come tragedy, which Elisa experienced on several fronts: she found herself out of work, taking care of a sick parent and a going through bad break-up all at the same time. Overcoming those obstacles inspired Elisa to tell her story. “I was only re-occurring for a season and I was doing Clueless the series right away,” Elisa explained of the time frame. “So I think what was hardest was really having Sabrina end with my dad dying, with my relationship ending. It was really the combination of those three things that made it so difficult. I just think it’s really important to share our challenges in life and this period of my life was so debilitating and where every aspect of my life was turned upside down and I think it’s incredibly healing to be able to share these challenges with people and to share grief and know that we can come out the other side with a more enhanced, deeper life.”
Elisa kept everything close to the vest, even from close pal and co-star Melissa Joan-Hart, 45, who wrote a note for the cover of her book. “I really kind of retreated from people that I knew professionally and I was more with my friends that were not in the industry that I spent time with,” Elisa added. “Melissa, I would say we are closer now that we were then. When she read the book, she was nice enough to read it and give a blurb for the cover of the book. She said, ‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t really understand what was happening.’ She’s such a good person and she said something to the effect of I wish I had known that all of this was happening so I could’ve been there more for you. That’s a lovely thing to say, but it’s also why I didn’t share it. It certainly was not her fault. You just retreat and isolate because it feels like too much for anybody. Nobody really knew what to do or how to help.”
The cast of Sabrina reunited in Feb. 2020 for the first time since the show ended in 2003. The show had a darker Netflix reboot that Elisa admits she didn’t watch — however, she teases there may be a bigger project in the works with the whole cast in the near future. “We’re always angling to do something,” Elisa shared. “We’re like, ‘Let’s get somebody to finance something so we can shoot it in Australia!’ We’re always kind of conspiring — ‘where can we go where we can revive the show or make a movie or something?’ I definitely think Sabrina, everybody would be up for it.”
While she awaits to see if she’ll get to pick-up where any of her characters left off, she has an idea where they would all be today and it’s right around the same place. “Probably in a similar place to where my character from Clueless would be which is probably running a fashion line of some sort and bossing around a lot of people,” Elisa revealed. “And married to an absurdly wealthy man that she is driving crazy.”