Former Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong are known for getting candid about their bittersweet experiences on the show, but a recent episode featuring their former co-star turned adult movie superstar Maitland Ward took a turn for the worse when the adult film star accused the actors of criticizing the show for ratings.
After discussing Ward’s career transition into the adult film industry on the Feb. 23 episode of their rewatch podcast Pod Meets World, Fishel pointedly asked her former co-star, “Do you hate us?”
Ward, who played Rachel McGuire on the original series, explained that she did not like how she was treated by Fishel on the set of Disney+’s Girl Meets World reboot, which followed Cory and Topanga’s family of four. “No, I do not hate you,” Ward responded. “I think that you hate me, because you wouldn’t speak to me on Girl Meets World, and that was hurtful.”
“You had an attitude about it. There was some beef between us, and I didn’t get it,” she said of her time on the reboot. “I didn’t know if you thought I was trying to steal attention… I was genuinely confused why we wouldn’t be good.”
Fishel explained that the Girl Meets World set did not reach her expectations for returning to the series, but she did not recall having any personal issues with Ward.
“Let’s put it this way, the memories we have of the fun set of Boy Meets World were not the memories of the fun set of Girl Meets World,” she said. “I went into it expecting it to be, and it wasn’t. It was a rather tumultuous place. I felt very ostracized. I felt very criticized. I felt a lot of different things being on that set… I am sorry that you thought I had something personally against you.”
Fishel later called Ward out for criticizing the cast in the press “almost any time the podcast is in the news,” to which Ward responded, “Are you trying to accuse me of using you, or are you trying to accuse me of something?”
The exchange only became more tense as Ward said they “hate” their former co-star Ben Savage and Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs, which Friedle strongly denied.
“Ben is one of the most important people I’ve ever met in my life, and I can’t stand the fact that he won’t speak to us,” he said, later explaining, “He just bailed on me. Ben absolutely one day woke up and said, ‘I don’t want Will in my life,’ and never told me why.”
Ward also pointed out that she has caught them being quite “negative” about the show the few times she has listened to the Pod Meets World podcast. After Fishel explained they’re just sharing their “experiences” on the show, Ward accused them of “trying to go at me now to get the ratings because you know that people will be interested,” adding, “I just wanted to remember the good times.”
She later asked her former co-stars if they criticized Jacobs on the show “just to get listens,” to which Strong maintained, “No, if I’m talking about Michael yelling at me, that’s my experience. I was yelled at. I watched him do things. I can describe that, that’s the truth.”
Ward reminded the Boy Meets World stars that they all owed their careers to Jacobs. “So is the price we pay for that… silence?” Fishel asked in response.
Despite the tense exchange, Fishel invited Ward to come back onto the show and insisted she didn’t hate her.
But she did call her “disingenuous” and said the actress thought appearing on the podcast “was an opportunity for her to get press by having conflict, which I am just not your girl to do that.”