Danielle Fishel was a little different when she returned to TV on “Girl Meets World” 14 years after “Boy Meets World” wrapped — and not everyone was happy about it.
In an exclsuive excerpt from “Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World,” Fishel details her time on the Disney Channel spinoff, including a personal rule she put in place and being disliked on set, with some referring to her as “crazy” and “difficult.”
“Book Meets World,” written Fishel, Rider Strong, Will Friedle and Variety‘s Emily Longeretta, is available now for pre-order and on stands Nov. 10.
Fishel was the only one of the three who was a series regular, appearing in all seventy-two episodes, alongside Savage. The pair entered the show as a partnership, guaranteed the same salary as part of a “favored-nations” contract.
“I was very, very much looking forward to doing Girl Meets World, and to having a partnership with Ben, where we were two adults on a kids’ show who could be examples of professionalism, showing that you can grow up and be normal in the industry. I wanted to be an advocate,” she says.
But when they reconnected, he very much had the same energy he did as a teenager — “And there are pros to that,” Fishel notes — but she had changed. “Ways that I had matured may have made me boring, but they definitely also made me more professional,” she says.
When she was a teenager on Boy Meets World, many of the cast playfully and innocently tackled each other. But when she returned to Girl Meets World at thirty-two, things were different.
“Things like that would happen on Girl Meets World, and I was now a married woman,” she says. “I then started creating boundaries. And those boundaries apparently made me ‘difficult.’”
She knew she was disliked. “They were uncomfortable around me. I knew they rolled their eyes at me when I would raise my hand with a note. I knew they were dismissive of me, but I didn’t know what they were saying behind my back,” she says. Then, during season 2, she was told that Jacobs was calling her “crazy” to others on set.
Disney actually had a rule that employees were not supposed to hug each other on set — a policy that seemed understandable in any workplace, and spoke to the changes Fishel had made in her own life. She knew of numerous instances where the touchy nature of young actors had escalated and become problematic. So after working in non-industry positions for years and then returning to set, Fishel realized that this new experience didn’t need to involve touching every day. So she politely asked that her coworkers not hug her.
“People respected it. But you would have thought I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to look me in the eyes anymore,’” she says. Some assumed her husband was jealous, which was not the case. After that, it became a very exhausting environment for Fishel, knowing that adults were gossiping about and judging her. She often pushed back on storylines she didn’t feel were appropriate for the Disney Channel audience, urging Jacobs to do better and reminding him that this was his legacy. And sometimes, it actually worked.
