The story of Boy Meets World didn’t end when the cameras stopped rolling.
The new documentary Doc Meets World follows three stars from the popular ‘90s sitcom — Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle — as they tour the country for their podcast “Pod Meets World,” a project the trio launched in 2022 with the intent of revisiting their time on ABC’s Boy Meets World, which aired from 1993 to 2000.
The film attempts to peek behind the curtain of the podcast that has taken the world by storm while also giving fans an introspective look at the cast’s friendships — and fallouts — since Boy Meets World ended. Fishel, Strong and Friedle also dive into the wounds that haven’t fully healed from their time on the series, detailing the behind-the-scenes tensions that shaped both BMW and its Disney Channel spinoff, Girl Meets World, their complex relationship with creator Michael Jacobs and their highly publicized estrangement from former costar Ben Savage, who led both shows as main character Cory Matthews.
Keep scrolling for the biggest bombshells of the documentary, featuring Fishel, Friedle and Strong as they continue to reclaim their own stories as both individuals and famous child actors:
‘Boy Meets World’ Cast Attempts to Contact Ben Savage
After Friedle, Fishel and Strong revealed that Savage allegedly stopped communicating with them when they began “Pod Meets World” in 2022, the trio continues to reach out to their former costar in the documentary. Friedle — who portrayed Savage’s older brother, Eric Matthews, on the show — makes an attempt to text Savage, showing the years’ worth of messages he previously sent with no response.
Friedle shows that his texts eventually turned from blue to green — insinuating that Savage eventually blocked his number when Friedle vowed to call him “every day” until he responds. However, when he and Strong, who played Cory’s bad boy best friend, Shawn Hunter, send him a question about restaurant recommendations while on the road, the message turns blue, hinting that Savage may have unblocked his former costar. The film does not address whether Savage ever responds to his many messages.
‘Boy Meets World’ Cast Discuss Ben Savage Fallout
Strong says that when he first had the “idea” for “Pod Meets World,” it “definitely” included Savage, but added that the actor didn’t feel it was a “worthwhile creative endeavor or way to connect with fans.”
“I flat-out told him, ‘Wow, I’m really going to miss you doing this; I think you’re making a mistake. I really wish you would consider it,” Strong recalls in the doc. “And he said, ‘I promise you it’s just not for me.’”
Strong said he fell out completely with Savage once the podcast got going.
“Ben refused to do the podcast, but we still communicated with him, still on friendly terms, we thought. But he unfollowed us on Instagram and blocked our phone numbers,” he says. “I feel sorry that he’s missing out on the experience that Danielle and Will and I are having.”
Despite wishing his onscreen BFF was part of the project, Strong admits he and Savage were “never close” in real life, but did form a “mind meld as performers and trusted one another” on Boy Meets World.
Friiedle, meanwhile, says he still texts Savage “probably at least once a month,” as he still has a “slight hope he’ll reach out one day.”
“I really do miss him. He’s arguably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life,” Friedle says offhand to Strong after they send a text to Savage in yet another attempt to reach out.
Drifting From Each Other Before ‘Pod Meets World’
While Friedle says he would have kept doing Boy Meets World forever and enjoyed his time on the sitcom, Fishel and Strong were clear that once the show wrapped they were intent on creating a purposeful distance from the show — and their costars.
“Toward the end of it, I had such a relationship with it that I wanted to get away from it so badly I wanted so badly to make my own identity away from the show,” Strong explains. “Without realizing it, I isolated myself from [Danielle and Will]. An unfortunate side effect of wanting to get away from BMW is I ended up cutting out the people who were closest, who knew me better than almost anybody.”
Strong notes that he was “afraid” of alienating fans by doing the podcast initially due to having any points of view that could be construed as negative, but it ended up have the “opposite effect.”
“This podcast was the greatest midlife crisis,” he quips, later adding that “it’s actually drawn people closer to us.”
Will Friedle Details His Anxiety — And Hints Jennifer Love Hewitt Breakup Might Have Been a Factor
Fishel and Strong both say that they were shocked Friedle’s career didn’t take off after BMW, saying they expected him to be the next Jim Carrey or Saturday Night Live cast member.
“I didn’t see anything that could have stopped him,” Fishel confesses.
Friedle, meanwhile, details his very first panic attack, which occurred between the sixth and seventh season of BMW when he was filming his Disney movie H E Double Hockey Sticks.
“I had a panic attack, the world spun, and I passed out,” he recalls. “Doctor came down and said, ‘I think you’re having an anxiety attack,’ and I said no I’m dying … I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it.”
Friedle explains he wasn’t taking care of himself at the time, had just “broken up with [his] first love,” who he read was “already dating someone new,” as well as “not exercising,” “eating like s***,” and “smoking a lot of weed and cigarettes.” (Friedle and Jennifer Love Hewitt broke up in 1997, and she began dating MTV VJ Carson Daly that same year.)
“For a lot of people, it could have happened once and that would have been it whereas for me, I get in my head about it. I didn’t know what it was and I just started spiraling,” he says about his anxiety.
He eventually returned to on-screen acting work for the BMW spinoff, Girl Meets World, thanks to his wife, Susan. He says when he finally made his first appearance on the show, he looked into the audience to see Susan “just bawling.”
Rider Strong Opens Up About Being the ‘Downer,’ Struggling With ‘Boy Meets World’
“Boy Meets World felt like I was slumming,” Strong recalls in the doc of playing Shawn. “I just never enjoyed the [sitcom] form.”
Fishel says she was convinced Strong was destined to become the next Brad Pitt or Leo DiCaprio and would go on to win an “Oscar at some point,” while Friedle thought Strong would either be a director — a career path Strong has since followed — or an author “with several novels out by now.”
Strong shares that his cynical attitude often pops up outside his work life, telling a friend, “[My wife] Alex will point out, ‘You’re just miserable, even when we’re doing fun stuff.’ And I’m the downer on the podcast. And what I’m mostly upset about most of the time is I’m not getting the work done that I know I can do and that when I do it, it’s just the biggest release in the world.”
He cites “Pod Meets World” as a positive aspect of his life, partially because of the “relief” he feels over realizing that BMW was, actually, a very “good” show.
“I am able to see the way a fan did for the first time and be like, ‘Oh right, what I was really upset about was my lack of control over this part of my life,’” he says.
There are still challenges. “There’s a little bit of like, I’m not allowed to not like Boy Meets World; it’s a little ungrateful of me because it’s the pinnacle of an acting achievement to have a series and have a series people love and want to still talk about but I feel like my taste is not very popular,” he says in the doc with a laugh. “But I think I used to avoid having opinions publicly or even embracing my public image in any way for fear of being disliked.”
Ultimately, when his friend asks him if he’s “ever going to be satisfied” with himself and his life, he replies, “yes.”
Danielle Fishel Reflects on Putting Men Before Her Career in the Past
“By the time I got to season 6 [of Boy Meets World], I felt like the show was stopping me from doing other things — and by the way, I’m not sure what those other things were other than being, like, boy crazy,” Fishel, who played Cory’s girlfriend and eventual wife on BMW, admits to her mom in the doc. “The show ended and I didn’t understand. Like, now is the time you are supposed to be out auditioning all the time.”
Her mom tells Fishel that she tried to get her to audition but she “didn’t want to do anything,” which Fishel admits is true.
“I was so burnt out. I didn’t want to do anything at all,” she agrees before noting that the last few years of BMW also contributed to her negative attitude toward acting. “If the set experience had been different those last couple seasons, maybe I would have been different.”
Fishel and her mom then hilariously recall her bad choice in men, recalling two boyfriends — one who “did not know the months in order” and had to “sing a song” to get it right, and another one who “out of a sentence with five words in it, three of them would be dude.”
“He was so cute. I have no idea,” Fishel quips. “I had no standards. I guess it was based on attraction.”
Strong, meanwhile, says that Fishel is the one who has “changed the most” over the years. “We really drifted apart. I sort of felt like she was the little sister I needed to move away from,” he shares. “She was always on a new trip, a new person.”
Friedle notes, “Danielle was in a bit of a flux. I’ve known many Danielles. You needed them all to get to the person she is today.”
Tension With ‘Boy Meets World’ Creator Michael Jacobs
Fishel, Friedle and Strong sit around a table with Strong’s brother, Shiloh, to discuss their fallout with Jacobs, who they say was “very proud” of the podcast until an episode with director Daniel Trainer dropped which questioned Jacobs’ methods.
Although Friedle attempts to defend Jacobs, Strong calls the young cast allegedly being yelled at by Jacobs an “abuse cycle,” saying putting them through all the negative emotions was not needed in order to get them to up their game.
Matthew Lawrence, who portrayed Strong’s on-screen brother Jack Hunter from seasons 5 through 7 on the show, then makes a brief cameo to discuss his complicated relationship to Jacobs.
“The first major runthrough [of BMW], Michael Jacobs just. undressed my performance. I think his line was, ‘OK, there’s like 140-something notes for Matthew Lawrence,’” he recalled. “Initially, the ego came into play and I honestly thought, I’m not going to go back; I’m going to say I have a conflict of interest; it’s not good for me emotionally.’ I was done.”
Eventually, however, he found the positive in Jacobs’ ways of communicating. “Michael was throwing me into the fire. and his method, you can say whatever you want, but who knows how many weeks it would have taken, what my ego would have become,” Lawrence explains.
Strong won’t be budged. “There’s a lot that I owe to Michael, but I needed to cut him out of my life and let him know that I don’t condone his behavior,” he tells the camera.
‘Girl Meets World’ Drama Revealed
While the trio don’t often discuss BMW’s spinoff, Girl Meets World — which ran on Disney for three seasons from 2016 to 2019 — on the podcast, they often allude to the series as being more difficult behind-the-scenes than its OG counterpart. The doc provides a peek behind the curtain regarding some of the spinoff’s alleged issued.
Frank Pace, a producer on the show, says Jacobs was both “great” and “a nightmare” to work with because he was such a “challenge,” before claiming that the writer made GMW’s stars Rowan Blanchard and Sabrina Carpenter “cry” during the pilot table read, an event that Fishel says she ‘blocked out” of her brain.
“Michael was horrible,” Pace recalled. “He reemed the entire young cast; he didn’t think they upheld the [legacy] of Boy Meets World. Rowan was crying; Sabrina was crying.”
Fishel, for her part, was initially hesitant to return to the franchise over her reservations of making another show that prioritized romantic love. She says one of her “early conversations” with Jacobs about the series was regarding her desire to put the focus on female friendship.
“If we are going to do a show on a 12-year-old girl, I don’t want the entire focus to be on a relationship,” she recalls telling him. “If we have the opportunity to do a TV show that’s geared toward girls, I was like, let’s make it about friendship.”
She says that Jacobs promised her the “love story” of GMW was not going to be about “a boy,” but about Blanchard and Carpenter’s characters, Riley — Topanga and Cory’s daughters — and Maya, Riley’s BFF. But that quickly changed. “I was like, I love that. And then in the pilot of the show, [she meets a boy].”
Fishel says that as a full-time cast member on the spinoff, she started to challenge Jacobs, which caused waves. “Eventually, I got the courage to push back [on the GMW set] and I started confronting Michael. And that did not go over well.”
Friedle, meanwhile, admits he initially was not going to be in the show at all because of having to learn it was greenlit when CNN “called and asked for a comment.” Jacobs was persistent.
“And [Michael Jacobs] said you can do whatever on the show,” he remembers, “And I said,’ I want to be a writer,’ and he was like, ‘You can’t do that.’” (Will ended up writing a couple of episodes of the show and reprising the role of Eric for a handful of episodes.)
Strong was most interested in staying behind the camera.
“When GMW came around, I didn’t consider myself an actor anymore and I definitely did not want to go back and put on the leather jacket and be Shawn Hunter again,” he quipped. “I ended up directing with my brother [Shiloh] for, like, 18 episodes and it was so much fun to be on set and be with the kids and kind of get a second chance to eat my own childhood.” (Strong did reprise the role of Shawn as a guest star throughout the three seasons, eventually marrying Maya’s mom.)
Read the full article here
