Danielle Fishel says her weight gain was used for a ‘funny’ storyline on ‘Boy Meets World’
Danielle Fishel was forced into a storyline about her weight gain on “Boy Meets World.”
During Monday’s episode of her “Pod Meets World” podcast, the 43-year-old recalled how her and her co-star Will Friedle’s weight gain was written into an episode of the ’90s coming-of-age sitcom.
“I remember when they called me into the office to tell me they were going to [do it]. It wasn’t really like they asked,” Fishel told her podcast co-host and “Boy Meets World” co-star Rider Strong and “Full House” alum Candace Cameron Bure.
“They just said, ‘We just want you to know, obviously, you guys have gained a little bit of weight, so we’re going to write an episode about it, and we just wanted you to know, and here’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be really funny.’ “
As a former child actress herself, Bure, 48, was shocked over Fishel’s story.
“Do you see my jaw on the floor right now? What?” she said.
Fishel, who played Topanga Lawrence on the teen series, said she was upset that Friedle, who played Eric Matthews, seemed unbothered by the weight-gain storyline.
“I remember the hardest part for me was that meeting because Will very much was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m totally fine with it,’ just immediately, which I know now he was very insecure, and it was really painful for him,” she recalled.
“But I didn’t know that,” Fishel added. “He was so funny and such an amazing actor and was like, ‘Yeah, sure, that’s no problem. That’s fine for me.’ “
“And for me, it was more like, oh, wow. No one had said anything to me about it. I had been aware that I had gained weight, but I was still, you know, I was a size 4,” the actress said. “And so I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight, we have to write an entire episode about my weight gain. And right now, I have to say I’m fine with it, because they didn’t even present to me another alternative.’ “
“And even if they did,” Fishel added, “I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that.’ “
Bure said that she also did a weight gain storyline on “Full House,” but it was handled in a much more gentle way.
“They actually talked to my mom and dad and they talked to me and said, ‘Would you feel comfortable if we wrote an episode like this?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ ” she recalled.
“But when you’re in it and doing it, it feels a little awkward,” Bure added.
“Boy Meets World” wrapped in 2000 after seven seasons on ABC.
Fishel, Strong, 44, and Friedle, 48, began co-hosting the rewatch podcast “Pod Meets World” in 2022.
On the Aug. 5 episode, Fishel said that she wishes Topanga and Ben Savage‘s character Cory Matthews didn’t get married in the show’s final season.
“I think I might have her still do the proposal,” she said, “and maybe he still says yes, and we go through the whole planning, and then we end up deciding it’s maybe not the right choice for us right now. And we still stay together. We don’t have to be broken up, but maybe we just save the marriage aspect for the end of the show and not spend the last, like, full year of the show married.”
At 90s Con earlier this year, Fishel told People that Cory and Topanga were too young to get married.
“There are stories of it working out,” Fishel said at the time, “but I would say, on a whole, getting married right out of high school is not usually ideal.”
