What To Know
- Danielle Fishel revealed a Boy Meets World episode that made her angry.
- Fishel was upset that Topanga’s storyline centered on her concern over fitting into size 2 or 4 jeans.
- She reflected on the personal impact of filming the episode, noting the pressure she felt about her body.
Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel recently opened up about a plotline that made her “angry” while filming the ’90s sitcom.
During the May 7 episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, the actress who played Topanga Lawrence reflected on the Boy Meets World Season 7 episode titled “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs.” It follows Topanga and Eric Matthews (Will Friedle) going on strict diets after noticing they had gained weight. In real life, however, Fishel had also gained weight.
“When I started the show at 12, I did weigh 94 pounds,” Fishel pointed out. “And now I’m 19, and I weigh, you know, 115 or whatever it is, and so I have put on that weight.”
The actress, now 45, described her mindset when she read the script for the episode addressing Topanga’s weight gain. “It is my responsibility, and as an actor, my body is part of my instrument,” she explained.
In the episode, Topanga’s husband, Cory Matthews’ (Ben Savage) initial thought she was pregnant when she couldn’t zip up her jeans and suddenly wasn’t hungry.
“I’m sure there was a part of me that understood why parts of it were funny then, too. So I’m like, ‘And it is funny, so why am I taking it so personally?’” Fishel recounted.
She then confessed, “This is the scene that bothered me the most. And it’s really because I remember doing the wardrobe fitting for these jeans, and they were a size either 26 or 27, which is a 2 or a 4… I knew no matter how I feel about my own body, because I was definitely like, ‘I’m huge, I’m fat, I’m disgusting.’”
The Dancing With the Stars Season 34 competitor added, “I knew that, factually, a size 4 is something most American women would think of as being borderline emaciated. And yet we are gonna do an entire episode around the fact that this size 4 woman has to be this concerned about her weight and her body, and that made me angry.”
Boy Meets World aired for seven seasons from 1993 to 2000. Starting in 2014, a spinoff titled Girl Meets World aired for three seasons, ending in 2017.
Boy Meets WorldandGirl Meets World,streaming on Disney+
