The cast of “Boy Meets World” is getting honest about their experiences growing up on the set, and what happened when they moved on to the spinoff, “Girl Meets World” years later.
In “Doc Meets World,” Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong’s new documentary that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, the group opens up about their decisions to return to the “Boy Meets World” universe 14 years after the initial series came to an end. “Girl Meets World,” led by Rowan Blanchard and Sabrina Carpenter, aired from 2014 to 2017 on Disney Channel.
In an interview with Fishel, producer Frank Pace recalls working with the show’s creator, Michael Jacobs. “Michael was fun for me to work with because he was a challenge. He was a nightmare for me to work with because he was a challenge. Same reason,” he says before recounting the “never to be forgotten table read” at the start of “Girl Meets World.”
“Pod Meets World”
Wes and Alex
Fishel says she blocked it out, as Pace reminds her what allegedly happened: “You blocked it out because Michael was horrible. He just reamed all the young cast. He didn’t think they upheld the tradition of ‘Boy Meets World’ and Rowan was crying, and Sabrina was crying.”
Strong, who directed 18 episodes of “Girl Meets World,” loved the directing part of the job. “It was so much fun to be able to be on set and work with the kids and kind of get a second chance at my own childhood,” he says. But not everything was positive. “There’s a lot that I owe to Michael and that I will always cherish, but I needed to cut him out of my life, let him know that I don’t condone his behavior.”
Fishel also explains that early on in the process, she told Jacobs that she felt very strongly about the storylines of “Girl Meets World,” seeing the show as a huge opportunity to focus on female friendships.
“I said, ‘If we’re going to do a show that’s about a 12-year-old girl, I don’t want the focus to be about a relationship.’ I was a 12-year-old girl who spent my entire life focused on relationships. And it didn’t do anything for me. That didn’t get me anywhere,” she recalls, getting choked up. “It’s not a good lesson. It’s not like what I would’ve wanted for myself.”
Jacobs told Fishlel that the real love story would be between the friendship between Carpenter and Rowan’s characters. Then the pilot happened, showing the lead character stumble into a boy’s lap, and the rest was history.
“Eventually, I got the courage to say something, and I started pushing back, and I started confronting Michael and I started being very vocal,” says Fishel. “That did not go over well.”
“Doc Meets World” follows Fishel, Friedle and Strong as they reunited for the “Pod Meets World” podcast in 2022 and began looking back at their journeys of growing up on a sitcom. The group then took the podcast on the road with a nationwide tour. The doc is directed by Chris Levitus and Zane Rubin and produced by Alexandra Barreto.
