Danielle Fishel is pulling back the curtain on her experience filming Girl Meets World.
In an excerpt from Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World, Fishel, 45, claimed she was disliked on set while reprising her beloved character Topanga. (Girl Meets World ran for three seasons on Disney Channel from 2014 to 2017.)
From Fishel’s perspective, former costar Ben Savage brought a similar energy from Boy Meets World to the spinoff — but she felt a shift within herself after her teenage years. While “many of the cast playfully and innocently tackled each other” on the OG show, Fishel felt like things were different during Girl Meets World.
“Things like that would happen on Girl Meets World, and I was now a married woman,” Fishel, who tied the knot with Jensen Karp in 2018, noted in the excerpt published by Variety on Monday, November 9. “I then started creating boundaries. And those boundaries apparently made me ‘difficult.’”
Fishel could sense the tension, adding, “They were uncomfortable around me. I knew they rolled their eyes at me when I would raise my hand with a note. I knew they were dismissive of me, but I didn’t know what they were saying behind my back.”
Disney apparently had a rule about employees not hugging each other on set, which resonated with Fishel, who “knew of numerous instances where the touchy nature of young actors had escalated and become problematic.”
Years after Fishel starred on Boy Meets World in the ‘90s, Fishel “politely asked that her coworkers not hug her” when she returned for the spinoff.
“People respected it. But you would have thought I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to look me in the eyes anymore,’” Fishel said in the excerpt, which noted jealousy wasn’t an issue for Karp.
The Disney Channel set soon “became a very exhausting environment for Fishel,” who knew “adults were gossiping about and judging her” — but she stood her ground.
“She often pushed back on story lines she didn’t feel were appropriate for the Disney Channel audience, urging [creator Michael] Jacobs to do better and reminding him that this was his legacy,” the excerpt continued. “And sometimes, it actually worked.”
The Boy Meets World tell-all — written by Fishel, former costars Rider Strong and Will Friedle and Variety’s Emily Longeretta — hits shelves on Tuesday, November 10.
