Untangling the Boy Meets World Stars' Drama
As Mr. Feeny once said on Boy Meets World, “You don’t have to be blood to be family.”And that’s exactly the type of bond the cast of the '90s coming-of-age series formed.
“We’ve all known each other for so long at this point that they do really feel like family,” Ben Savage explained of starring on the sitcom as the titular boy, Cory Matthews, while appearing at a 2019 Fan Expo Boston panel with castmates Danielle Fishel (Topanga Lawrence), Rider Strong (Shawn Hunter) Will Friedle (Eric Matthews), William Daniels (Mr. Feeny) and Bonnie Bartlett (Dean Lila Bolander). Throughout their seven-season run and in the years after, “We’ve seen each other throughout our ups and downs," added Ben, who also appeared in the Girl Meets World spinoff with Danielle, "and we spent so much time together that I do feel like these are siblings and friends.”
Indeed, the castmates have navigated many of life’s big moments together. When Danielle married Jensen Karp in 2018, for instance, there was a mini Boy Meets World reunion at her wedding. And after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2024, she told E! News how Will and Rider were the first people she told outside of her family.
Fans loved witnessing the cast’s closeness, too. Whether it was at a fan fest or in an Instagram photo of William hanging out with his “favorite students,” millennials’ hearts swooned when the actors came together.
"Immediately, no matter how much time it’s been since we’ve seen each other," Ben continued during the Fan Expo Boston panel, "as soon as we get back together, it’s like nothing’s changed."
But at this point, his old costars are still waiting on that next hang.
Danielle, Will and Rider have said that Ben has ghosted them in recent years. And during a Feb. 23 episode of the trio’s podcast Pod Meets World, Danielle had a tense exchange with Maitland Ward (who spent two seasons as Rachel) as they hashed out what Maitland called “some beef."
But perhaps there’s hope that any unresolved tension can be wrapped up like a beloved series finale. However, it would take work.
"Over this many years and this much time together in different work atmospheres, you have fights, you have falling outs, you have moments where you come back together,” Danielle acknowledged at 90s Con Tampa in September 2023. “But because we are constantly put back together—there have been times where we’ve needed space from each other, where we’ve taken long distances."
And yet, she continued, there's always space for a class reunion.
"When you really commit to a relationship and you really commit to this idea that we are always going to be in each other's lives," the actress continued, "the amount of growth and grace and forgiveness and compassion and true knowing of each other that we now have that we never would have had had we written each other off and said 'I’m done with you, I don’t want to see you again.’ And so that commitment to relationship is something that I think is just a lesson for everybody."
And for those Boy Meets World fans who are looking to study up on exactly what's been causing drama all these years, class is officially in session.
While Boy Meets World wasn't a drama, a podcast exchange between costars Danielle Fishel (Topanga) and Maitland Ward (Rachel) had plenty of it.
As the two explained on the Feb. 23, 2025 episode of Pod Meets World, the issue seemed to stem from a Facebook message Maitland sent Danielle in 2013 in which she congratulated her on her engagement to now ex-husband Tim Belusko and Boy Meets World spin-off Girl Meets World. However, Danielle said she didn't see the note at the time. It wasn't until Maitland mentioned the message in the press years later, she added, that Danielle went back to look for it—finding it in a "graveyard" of DMs.
Danielle noted she then asked costar and podcast cohost Will Friedle (Eric) for Maitland's phone number to apologize but that Maitland didn't want to talk privately at that point—saying Maitland told Will she'd save the conversation for the podcast and "rock the stats." However, Maitland said she didn't want to speak to Danielle because she thought her reach-out was "disingenuous."
Among her proof: The fact that Danielle had unfriended her on Facebook, something Danielle insisted she "never purposefully" did.
But the beef didn't end there. Maitland also said on the podcast that Danielle barely spoke to her when they reunited in 2014 for Girl Meets World, a situation she found hurtful as she'd invited Danielle to her 2006 wedding and thought they were friends.
While Danielle said she didn't have an issue with Maitland at the time, she pointed out they hadn't seen or spoken to each other since the wedding. She also suggested she didn't have the best experience working on Girl Meets World, but made it clear it wasn't anything against Maitland.
However, Maitland accused Danielle of being upset at the time over the attention Maitland was getting in the adult entertainment industry. Danielle denied this, noting she posed for Maxim in 2014.
Maitland also accused Danielle, Will and their cohost Rider Strong (Shawn) of being negative on Pod Meets World and hating costar Ben Savage (Cory) and Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs (though she later backpedaled and said she meant they just had disagreements).
In any case, the podcast cohosts made it clear they did not hate Ben or Michael and that they were simply sharing their experiences from the show.And when Maitland accused Danielle of "trying to go at" her for ratings, Danielle shot this down—claiming it was Maitland who was using this opportunity to get press.While Danielle said she and Maitland don't need to be friends, she noted, "I don't hate Maitland, not even the slightest."
Fourteen years after Boy Meets World ended, Ben and Danielle reprised their roles of Cory and Topanga on Girl Meets World—a comedy series that followed their daughter Riley (Rowan Blanchard), her friend Maya (Sabrina Carpenter) and their lives at home and school.The show ran on Disney Channel from 2014 to 2017. However, Danielle described it on her podcast as a "very, very difficult set."
"Let’s put it this way," she said on a February 2025 episode of Pod Meets World. "The memories we have of the fun set of Boy Meets World were not the memories or the fun set of Girl Meets World. It just wasn’t. And I went into it, hoping it was going to be. I went into it expecting it to be, and it wasn’t. It was a rather tumultuous place. It was a place I felt very ostracized. I felt very criticized. I felt a lot of different things being on that set."
E! News reached out to Disney for comment but did not hear back.
As Mr. Feeny once said, friendship, "is a real gift, and it's given with no expectation and no gratitude is necessary—not between real friends."
And while Danielle, Rider and Will used to be tight with Ben, they told Variety in June 2023 they hadn't heard from him in three years. As she put it, "He ghosted us.”
Explaining he has no idea why Ben gave them the silent treatment, Will shared he simply disappeared."I wish I knew why, to this day,” he added. "We didn’t have a fight. There’s no falling out. There was no animosity. He just woke up one day, and decided I don’t want this person in my life anymore. I finally sent a text saying, 'I’ve known you for 30 years, what’s going on?' I said, 'I’m gonna call you every day until you tell me not to call you anymore.' That lasted about three weeks or a month, every single day."
Danielle expressed her wish for them to one day reconnect with Ben."Speaking for myself, Ben and I may be estranged right now and we may have our complaints about each other, but I will always love Ben and want what’s best for him," she continued. "I don’t think this is the end of our story—but time will tell."Ben hasn't yet, remaining silent on the subject (he also didn't respond to E! News' request for comment), but his old pals still hold out hope.
"Ben is one of the most important people I’ve ever met in my life," Will said in a February 2025 Pod Meets World episode, "and I can’t stand the fact that he won’t speak to us."
In January 2020, Trina McGee (Angela) spoke out about disrespect she experienced on Boy Meets World, including being "called Aunt Jemima on set."Later, she revealed Will made the remark and that he apologized to her "22 years ago and again days ago in a in a three-page letter."
"We talked more on it and he acknowledged that he really wasn’t educated enough in his early twenties to know he was truly offending me," she wrote on Instagram in April 2020. "THIS SHOULD AND COULD BE A TEACHING MOMENT FOR ALL."
Ultimately, Trina and Will moved forward."Will apologized to me and I forgave him, I then apologized to him for making the statements public because his joke came out of just not knowing, not viciousness and he forgave me," she said. "That’s what friends do."
As Will recalled on Pod Meets World in 2022, he saw Trina exit her dressing room in a "big red headscarf" and "attached no cultural significance to that whatsoever."
Thinking he was teasing her like he did the rest of the cast, he continued, he decided to "make fun of her red hat." "That’s as far as my dumbass privileged mind saw it," Will said. "So right before I walked on for my part, I walked by and went 'love your syrup' and walked onto the set thinking boom, zing, just got her for her hat."Trina told Will the joke wasn't OK, and he was "mortified," noting the moment changed his life."You can’t just throw things out there because you think it’s funny and walk away," he said. "You could be hurting people."
During the podcast, Trina and her costars also set the record straight on her Boy Meets World departure.Trina made her last appearance on the show in a 2000 episode called "Angela's Ashes." However, she wasn't a part of the series finale—a decision she thought was made by the rest of the cast.
"I was told in kind of a weird, offhanded way by a very important person that you guys all went to Michael Jacobs and you said, ‘We don’t want her in the last episode,'" she shared on the 2022 episode of Pod Meets World. "'She’s somehow taking our light’ was the gist of it, and ‘we don’t want her in the last episode.’"
This competitiveness, Trina continued, hurt her for years. However, Danielle, Will and Rider insisted the rumored conversation "never happened," with Danielle swearing on her children and Will swearing on his marriage."I'm sorry, you say that's competitiveness. That's not competitiveness to me. That's sociopathy," Will said after hearing the rumor. "This pisses me off."Trina believed them, and they were able to make amends.
"Once it hits your brain and then you're silent," she said, "the silence grows and then the whole imagery of it becomes bigger than life and bigger than what it really is."As Trina later added, "I like trusting you. It feels really good."
Danielle has also apologized for how she treated Trina on the set of Girl Meets World.
"I owed @realtrinamcgee an apology for being rude, cold & distant when she guest starred on GMW (her tweet regarding warm hellos being met with cold blank stares was about me)," Danielle wrote on X in June 2020. "Trina and I spoke over a month ago and she gracefully accepted my apology."
And they talked about how they were pitted against each other, particularly when it came to the rumors surrounding Trina's exit."By the time you came to Girl Meets World, you had had 14 or 15 years of believing we got together to keep you from being in the series finale of Boy Meets World
"We could have been there for each other the way we’ve been there for through multiple hardships over the last several years," she added. "So that, for me, is the biggest lesson and the importance of talking and being willing to dig deep for the same purpose, which is growing and becoming better people and doing better."
After the actress who initially played Topanga was let go and Danielle was cast, she did her first producer run-through and prepped for Michael's critique.
"Michael starts off the notes by saying, 'Danielle, I'm going to give you your notes all in one time at the end, and I'm going to give everyone else their notes now,'" she recalled on Pod Meets World in 2022. "'Because if I made everyone sit here through all of the notes I have for you, we would all be here for hours and no one would ever get to go home.'"
Danielle said this was done in front of everyone and that she teared up. She noted Michael went through each line with her and her mom and told them what Danielle needed to change, like speaking more slowly. As she remembers him saying, "'All I know is if you don't come back tomorrow doing this entirely differently, you are also not going to be here,' referencing the girl I had replaced."
Danielle said she and her mom rehearsed until 3 or 4 a.m. to get her lines right, which she said meant "making Michael happy."After Danielle did the network run-through the next day, she said, Michael gave her a standing ovation.For his part, Michael said he was "sorry to hear those were her thoughts" and that "there was more" to the story."She feels that her job was threatened, I believe," he said on a 2023 episode of Reel Talker. "It was, but it wasn't by me. I was trying to save it, which we did. She saved it."
Michael added he "always believed in her" and still does.
In the 2024 doc Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, it was revealed that Will and Rider were among several stars who wrote letters of support for dialogue coach Brian Peck.
Brian was arrested in 2003 and charged with “lewd acts with a child,” with a LAPD release noting “the minor’s family reported that Peck had molested the child.” In the doc, Drake Bell shared he was the minor.
According to a case summary obtained by NBC News, Brian pleaded no contest and was convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts” and oral copulation of a minor. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
In an episode of Pod Meets World, Will said Brian was “instantly spinning it to where it wasn’t his fault” but “the fault of his victim.” And while Rider said Brian “admitted to one thing,” he noted he and Will didn't know the extent of the crimes for which Brian was convicted.
Will and Rider also appeared in court to support Brian."We’re sitting in that courtroom on the wrong side of everything—of course having no idea of this—filled with child actors to the point where the victim’s mother turned and said, 'Look at all the famous people you brought with you and it doesn’t change what you did to my kid,'" Will recalled. "And I just sat there wanting to die where it was like, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"Drake has since spoken to Will and Rider and forgiven them. As Will shared in another podcast episode, Drake told him, "'Before you say a word, I want you to know I love you and I forgive you.'"
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