Girl meets TV reboots! Former ‘90s child star Danielle Fishel is more than pleased to see beloved family shows making a comeback. The actress — who’s very own Boy Meets World got a reboot, Girl Meets World, last year — tells Us Weekly why she thinks other favorites such as Full House and Gilmore Girls have followed suit.
“I do think there was an age of television back in the ‘90s that was a little bit more wholesome,” Fishel, 34, tells Us. “I think society has reached a point where they are tired of seeing the disgustingness that they’re seeing on television. They’re craving television that they felt comfortable [with] and they felt okay laughing at and watching and being with their kids. And they didn’t feel like you needed to change the channel if your grandparent was in the room.”
As previously reported, the cast of Full House (which ran from 1987 to 1995) just wrapped a Netflix reboot, Fuller House, which will premiere next year. Netflix also revived Gilmore Girls, and will produce four 90-minute episodes. (The Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel show aired from 2000 to 2007.)
“I think it’s great,” Fishel adds to Us. “I think the more wholesome things that come back to television, the better off we’ll be.”
Fishel played Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World from 1993 to 2000. Since then, she’s attached herself to other projects that leave an impact on audiences. More recently, she starred in the Omar Ashmawey-directed race drama Boiling Pot, which is based on true events that have happened in the U.S. between 2008 and 2012. Fishel plays a college student who experiences these real-life stories on a fictional campus.
“It sparks a conversations,” Fishel tells Us. “We tend to think that we would hear these stories and it would be from 50 or 60 years ago. This kind of stuff is still going on today.”
For more on Fishel’s crime film, check out her Q&A below:
US WEEKLY: What drew you to this film?
DANIELLE FISHEL: I really couldn’t believe that the things that I was reading within the script were actually true events that had taken place. . .within the last 10 years.
US: How would you describe your character Valerie Davis?
DF: She’s a stereotypical, white upper-middle-class girl. She has lived a very, somewhat sheltered life. She doesn’t recognize sometimes the very obvious signs of racism that are going on around her because she doesn’t feel them happening to her.
US: What was the most difficult scene to film?
DF: The actual Compton cookout party. . .I was shocked looking at it, thinking that students [from the University of California San Diego in 2010] were encouraged to wear black face and encouraged to wear gold teeth and big gold chains.
US: What do you want audiences to take away from the film?
DF: Every single character in the movie, at some point in time, expresses and displays some sort of — whether it be hidden or conscious — prejudice or bias against another group. . .Just because you experience racism doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t also putting racism out into the world.
US: Do you have a preference between comedy and drama?
DF: I only want to be involved in projects that have a very good and important message. If something is a comedy for the sake of just comedy’s sake and it doesn’t have a good message, I don’t have an interest in being part of it. If something is just serious and scary with no good message, I don’t want to be a part of it.
