Danielle Fishel Says ‘Boy Meets World’ Still Impacts Her Body Image Today
Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel opened up about how her experience on the sitcom led to “disordered thoughts about food” and “working out.”
Specifically, she cited an episode of the sitcom that focused on her weight.
“It was just in my head forever,” she said.
Boy Meets World brought a lot of laughs to the ’90s, some at the expense of its stars. For example, Danielle Fishel, who played Topanga Lawrence, recently opened up about how, at 43, she still deals with “disordered thoughts about food” and “working out” linked to an episode that focused on her weight.
The episode, titled “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs,” took place in Boy Meets World season 7, and was inspired by the fact that Fishel and her co-star Will Friedle, who played Eric Matthews, had gained weight. Together, their characters decide to go on diets, and Corey Matthews (Ben Savage), Topanga’s husband, thinks she’s pregnant. The show’s writers never consulted Fishel or Friedle about the storyline, but instead, gave them a heads up about it before taping.
“They just kind of said, ‘We just want you to know…’” Fishel recently recalled on the Pod Meets World podcast, which she co-hosts with Friedle and Rider Strong. “‘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 be really funny.’”
Fishel explained that Friedle, at the time, acted unfased by the idea, though she later learned he wasn’t. “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 four,” she recalled. “So I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight, we have to write an entire episode about [it].’”
Fishel felt obligated to do the episode because show runners didn’t give her an alternative. “And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that,’” she added. “It was just in my head forever.”
Full House star Candace Cameron Bure was a guest on the podcast and shared that she, too, had her weight used as a spectacle on the sitcom and is affected by the experience today. “The ’90s were a rough time,” she quipped.
Fishel was glad to at least have solidarity in her peers. “It’s a weird, comforting feeling to know that there isn’t something wrong with me, that that’s my experience,” she shared. “We all say the same things: ‘I have to reprogram myself. I still struggle with disordered thoughts about food and disordered thoughts about working out.’”
She continued: “It has taken a lifetime to get to a place where I feel like, ‘OK, I’ve got a handle on it.’ And even still, the bad habits and the bad thoughts can creep up and I have to rein it back in.”
If you believe you are struggling with an eating disorder and need support, call the National Eating Disorders Association helpline at (800) 931-2237. You can text HOME to 741741 to message a trained crisis counselor from the Crisis Text Line for free.
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