What To Know
- Rider Strong and Will Friedle revealed that Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs “screamed” at them during a tense lunch about the Girl Meets World spin-off.
- The actors recounted feeling blindsided by the spin-off’s development and described Jacobs’ intense efforts to convince them to participate in the casting process.
- Both original series and its spin-off are now available for streaming on Disney+.
Boy Meets World stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle claimed that creator Michael Jacobs “screamed” at them over the spin-off Girl Meets World.
During the August 13 episode of Pod Meets World, Strong, Friedle, and Danielle Fishel discussed the tense moment in the middle of casting for the 2014 sequel.
Both Strong (who played Shawn Hunter) and Friedle (who played Eric Matthews) had no idea that Girl Meets World was in the works until the news broke publicly. Understandably, they were frustrated about not hearing about or being involved in the spin-off in advance.
“And then Michael screamed at you in the lunchroom about doing the show,” Fishel (who played Topanga Lawrence) recalled, setting up a replay of the meeting.
To that, Strong shared, “Michael took us out to lunch, Will and I. I don’t even know why we agreed to go because at that point, neither of us wanted to do the show.”
Friedle explained, “I think we wanted to hear, like, how did we not even get the common courtesy of, ‘Hey, this is happening’? And of course, we knew that we were going to get the Michael Jacobs run-around. Like, Michael can sell anything to anyone. So I’m sure by the end of the meeting, he thought that we would be apologizing to him for even wondering why we didn’t know about Girl Meets World.”
Ultimately, Jacobs convinced the two men to attend a casting session, and both of them made guest appearances in the spin-off. But not without some heated words.
“We were just supposed to have lunch,” Strong pointed out. “And he talked, and talked, and talked — and yelled, and yelled, and yelled. And at one point, it was like, ‘Didn’t I let you go to college?!’ was the thing he was screaming at me.”
“In the middle of a restaurant!” Friedle reiterated, to which Strong agreed, “It was a lot.”
Boy Meets World aired for seven seasons from 1993 to 2000. In addition to Fishel, Strong, and Friedle, it starred Ben Savage, William Daniels, Betsy Randle, William Russ, Lindsay Ridgeway, Matthew Lawrence, and Trina McGee, among others.
Meanwhile, Girl Meets World aired for three seasons from 2014 to 2017. Fishel and Savage reprised their roles as Topanga and Cory, with Strong, Friedle, and Daniels all making guest appearances. Rowan Blanchard starred as Topanga and Cory’s daughter, Rowan, and Sabrina Carpenter played her best friend, Maya.
Boy Meets World and Girl Meets World, streaming on Disney+