Maitland Ward revealed where she stands with her Boy Meets World costars following her appearance on “Pod Meets World.”
“We have not spoken at all,” Ward, 49, said of her current dynamic with Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong in a Monday, May 18, interview with Fox News Digital. “There’s been no contact.”
Ward added that she did reach out to Fishel to offer her “support” when the actress competed on Dancing With the Stars season 34.
“There’s been no ill will either. There’s been no fighting or anything,” she clarified. “It’s just, we have not spoken, those three. [We’re] in a place where we are not connected right now, and it’s sad.”
Last year, Ward appeared on “Pod Meets World” to recount her time on the series. While the conversation started off friendly, things took a turn when Fishel and Ward got in a heated exchange after Fishel asked Ward if she “hated” them.
“No, I do not hate you,” Ward said. “I think that you hate me because you wouldn’t speak to me on Girl Meets World and that was hurtful.”
Fishel claimed that she did “talk” to Ward during her visit to the Girl Meets World set. (Fishel not only reprised her role as Topanga on the spinoff but served as a coproducer.)
Ward also accused Fishel of unfriending her from Facebook, which Fishel denied. Fishel shared that she did not frequent the platform and wanted to reach out to Ward after stumbling upon one of her messages years later.
“I asked Will, ‘Will you please ask Maitland if I could have her phone number so I could apologize to her?’” Fishel said. “And you wrote back to Will, ‘No, let’s just save it for the podcast, it will be great for the ratings.’”
Ward denied that suggestion the conversation would benefit ratings and claimed she thought their chat would have happened “right away.”
“There was some beef between us and I didn’t get it. And maybe I picked up the wrong signals, but definitely there was some sort of weirdness there,” Ward said, adding that she “did not know” what went wrong with their friendship. “I didn’t know if you thought that I was trying to come onto the set and take over. Not take over, but try to steal attention or something. But I didn’t know.”
Fishel apologized for making it seem like it was “something personally against” Ward and that was not the case on the set of Girl Meets World. Ward claimed that Fishel “didn’t like the fact” she “was getting a lot of attention” after Ward joined the adult entertainment industry and Fishel reminded Ward that she “was on the cover of Maxim in 2014.”
After Ward’s podcast appearance made headlines, the actress shared that she was “surprised” by her conversation with Fishel.
“It just felt uneasy to have people that you called friends — especially in the past,” Ward said in a February 2025 interview with TooFab. “I thought Danielle was my friend — I can see that she did not like me, and she has harbored not liking me through the years, but it’s sad to me too.”
Fishel has not addressed Ward’s remarks since her appearance on the podcast.
