Alex Mack and Shawn Hunter have a little bit of romantic history.
Larisa Oleynik revealed that her first kiss was with Rider Strong on the set of Boy Meets World — and the actor was her first major crush.
“[Rider] was my first kiss, like, ever. That’s why there was so much tongue!” Oleynik, 42, shared during the latest episode of “Pod Meets World” on Monday, January 29. “All I remember of that entire experience, of the first episode at least, it was between the first and second episode of [The Secret World of] Alex Mack. I was a very young, 14 or 15 years old, and I was a very late bloomer. When things sped up, they really sped up. But at that point, I was a kid.”
Oleynik joined the cast of Boy Meets World in 1995 as a season 3 guest star. The actress played Dana Pruitt, the first girlfriend of Shawn Hunter (Strong). She later returned in season 5 for the Valentine’s Day episode “First Girlfriend’s Club,” where Shawn’s exes try to protect his new love, Angela (Trina McGee), from getting her heart broken.
While speaking about their time together on BMW, Strong, 44 — who cohosts “Pod Meets World” with Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle — said he recalled Oleynik being “more sheltered” than he was and was surprised by her confidence during their first smooch.
“I remember sitting at the rehearsal, like, ‘This is going to be weird because it’s Larisa,’ and then you just went right into [the kiss],” Strong recalled. Oleynik replied, “Because I was terrified! I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Oleynik pointed out that there was no intimacy coordinator on set in the ’90s to ensure the well-being of actors during intimate scenes, so the teens had to figure it out themselves along the way.
“I’m sure [director] Jeff McCracken did his best, but there was nobody talking us through it,” Oleynik continued. “I’m sure at that age, I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know what I was doing. But I had no idea what I was doing, so I just went 150 and just committed.”
Oleynik quipped that trying to focus while in school on set was also an impossible task, causing Fishel, 42, to joke that she probably couldn’t think about anything else other than Strong’s “tongue” at the time.
Prior to landing their roles on Boy Meets World, Oleynik and Strong had a history together. The pair starred in the San Francisco production of Les Misérables as Cosette and Gavroche, respectively, when they were 8 years old and went on to sign with the same talent agent. That history added layers of complexity to their onscreen romance, Olenyik explained, because Strong wasn’t just her first kiss — he was also her first crush.
“I found my journal from when I was 8 years old. I also had a very large crush on Rider,” she said before telling Strong, “You had to have known. Don’t you remember me, like, forcing you to hold my hand?”
“I guess so, but I feel like there were times when we all admitted we had crushes on each other,” Strong replied. “It was just kid stuff. We were 9 and 10.”
Strong was a popular teen with his female coworkers. Fishel, who played Topanga on the ABC sitcom, also revealed that she developed feelings for Strong while filming the show.
“I had a crush on Rider,” she confessed during an August 2023 episode of the podcast. “He was so smart and … one of my favorite things about Rider — and it continues to this day — Rider is very effusive. He will tell you how he feels and he’s very free with his compliments, but he doesn’t throw them out willy-nilly. When he compliments you, it is thoughtful, it has meaning, and you can tell it’s coming from a very real place.”
Though Fishel said she was “annoyed” by Strong when first meeting him, she recalled that they eventually formed “a very nice, deep friendship and we had very meaningful conversations.” Sharing that they took the same acting class for a while, Fishel recalled: “I remember getting a … very real compliment from Rider. And then feeling like, ‘Oh, my God, I love you.’”
