Boy Meets World Stars Address The Biggest Behind-The-Scenes Questions Ahead Of New Documentary

Tribeca Film Festival is currently underway, offering a host of feature film, short film, trailer, and documentary releases and sneak peeks from June 3 to 14. While there’s plenty to see over the festival’s 11 days, one of the most unique and exciting documentaries in the lineup is Doc Meets World, a brand-new documentary with behind-the-scenes looks at and major answered questions about the fan-favorite 90s show Boy Meets World.

What truly sets this documentary apart, however, is who is behind the project. Specifically, original cast members Danielle Fishel, who played Topanga Lawrence; Rider Strong, who played Shawn Hunter; and Will Friedle, who played Eric Matthews, are collaborating once more on this new documentary that provides audiences with a closer look at not only Boy Meets World but also their ongoing podcast together, Pod Meets World.

While a significant part of this documentary highlights their decades-long friendship and more about their podcast and the live shows that they have taken across the country in recent years, Doc Meets World also gets into some of the thornier parts of this show, its cast and crew, and the fanbase. Among the topics discussed in the documentary are Fishel, Strong, and Friedle’s falling out with costar Ben Savage, who played main character Cory Matthews, as well as the complexity of the show’s creator, Michael Jacobs.

Fishel, Strong, and Friedle sat down with ScreenRant’s Liz Declan to provide an even deeper understanding of these various aspects of the fandom and their experience bringing this beloved show—and the podcast and documentary connected to it—to life.

Doc Meets World Doesn’t Shy Away From Boy Meets World Fans’ Biggest Questions

The cast of Boy Meets World leaning on a wall

Many 90s kids are very familiar with Boy Meets World and its cast, as this was not only a smash hit when it was first released in 1993 but also has since become a beloved nostalgic show for millennials (and others). In fact, that is in part what Pod Meets World offers to audiences, as Strong, Friedle, and Fishel have, for years now, been rewatching the show in its entirety and discussing their experiences and opinions following each episode.

Despite that popularity and nostalgia, though, not everything about Pod Meets World is blissful reminiscing about the original show. All three stars have spoken on the podcast about some of the more complicated, at times even painful aspects of Boy Meets World and their time working on the show. Among the bigger topics in that area is the complexity and even tension surrounding the show’s creator. As Doc Meets World makes clear, Michael Jacobs was not always the easiest to work with.

Rather, Strong, Friedle, and Fishel have all spoken about Jacobs’ gruffer approach and what that felt like as kids on set—although, all three also voiced that their feelings about Jacobs are complicated, as they experienced difficult moments with him but also feel indebted to him, in a way, because Boy Meets World has given them the lives they have today.

Will Friedle: I go back and forth on it. I mean, I think there are times where, you know, again, I’ve spoken about this many times, and we’ve all talked about it on the podcast, that I think I had a slightly different relationship not with Michael, I think we all had kind of the same relationship with Michael, but with how Michael treated me compared to how he treated Rider and Danielle. So, for me, I go back and forth, and you kind of see that in the documentary, where I kind of say, well, hey, but I learned how to be a comedian kind of with some of the ways he treated me. And then Rider has the good point of like, yeah, but did you need to go through all of that to find that? And that’s still something that I go back and forth on.

There are times where I think it’s like, no, you need to be thrown into the deep end to learn how to swim, and then there are times where I’m like, well, that’s actually a terrible way to learn how to swim. So, yeah, I think it’s one of those questions that, as we’re doing the podcast, I’m still—we talk about unpacking—that I’m still unpacking. And that’s one of the things, the talks that we have, these kind of deep conversations we have about how we were raised as actors, quote unquote, on the set, was not only different for the three of us but maybe wasn’t the healthiest way to grow a confident and successful actor who walks onto another set after Boy Meets World knowing how to hit the beat and how to hit the moment as opposed to knowing how to do what we think our executive producer wanted us to do, which are two very different things.

Rider Strong: There’s an irony about every time that we are critical of our experience on Boy Meets World, you know, whether it’s on our podcast or as part of the documentary or when we’re at a live show. Of course, we’re only having this conversation because the show was so successful, you know? It’s like, people are only listening to us because the show was good, so whenever we’re critical about our experience or the show itself, we have to remind ourselves, yeah, but no, people only care because it was good. So, ultimately, no matter how much we criticize our experience or criticize the show, I don’t know if ‘the ends justify the means,’ but certainly, we got a lot out of it, and ultimately, I think we feel very positive about Boy Meets World and our lives and the benefits that it’s brought us.

Danielle Fishel: Totally. The means are wonderful. A+, love the show, it’s fantastic. Is it the way I would want to run a set or the way I want to interact with people I work with? No. So, you take the good and the bad from it. We definitely have a fantastic show we got out of the way that show was run, and whether or not the show would have been as good if it were run differently, I don’t know. But it was his style, and I also feel like, despite sometimes having an abrasive approach, I also believe that Michael cared about us immensely. It doesn’t necessarily mean he put his care for us in first place; he was running a show and running a business, but I’ve never once thought that he treated us the way he treated us because he hated us. I’ve never felt that way.

The cast also shared that their experiences on the set of Boy Meets World as kids went on to inform their own approaches as writers, producers, and directors.

Rider Strong: I ended up directing a bunch of episodes of Girl Meets World, and I felt like it was my primary responsibility to support the kids in a way that I felt that certain adults had been supportive of me when we were on the set of Boy Meets World. We had a lot of great directors come through and teach me a lot and encourage me to be a great actor and to be the best actor I could and to think about my career in really healthy ways.

So, for me, being able to walk onto the set of Girl Meets World and try and be that mentor and teacher and director to those kids was such a gift. And, you know, I’ve had conversations with some of them since. Corey Fogelmanis, I got to see him a couple of years ago, and he was so grateful, and he said, ‘I remember whenever you and your brother were directing, we always were just so happy. It was like the best week whenever you guys were directing.’ And it made me feel so good because now here he was at 20, 21 years old, telling me that when he was 12, I affected him positively. It was a great feeling. So, I definitely have carried forward trying to be a good role model in that regard.

Danielle Fishel: I did as well. I will say, though, that going into Girl Meets World, I didn’t remember or see the Boy Meets World situations we talk about on our podcast. I didn’t see them the same way. It wasn’t until Girl Meets World that I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of wild behavior for an adult who has so much power. This is kind of a wild way for him to speak to kids.’ And then it was like, that’s the way he spoke to me. So, Girl Meets World kind of made me shift perspective on some of the ways, you know, we were raised as actors on Boy Meets World. It’s not like I went into Girl Meets World thinking, ‘Oh, I guess I’ll do this job, but I’m going to have to protect these children.’ I actually went into it thinking I grew up on such a beautiful set. I had such a wonderful experience. I can’t wait for these kids to have the same experience. So, yeah, I do want to clarify that it’s not like I went into Girl Meets World thinking that kids were in for a terrible experience.

Regarding any surprises they’ve experienced throughout their rewatch journey, the stars shared a range of experiences.

Will Friedle: I knew going into season seven was going to be difficult for me for a number of reasons. We’ve talked about the amount of weight that I had put on, and I was really, really struggling with a brand-new mental health problem with my anxiety. So, that was so new to me at the time, and watching the first episode of season seven was a lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be. I knew it was going to stir up some suff, and I was like, oh, here we go, but I was kind of amazed at how much it stirred up and how difficult watching that first episode was. I had prepared for it a little bit, but I don’t think I realized how hard it was going to be for me.

Danielle Fishel: I hadn’t remembered bursting into tears during the tag of the episode with the class president storyline, that’s one of them, but more than anything we’ve ever uncovered on the podcast, doing the documentary, the moment that you see—you even see it happen on my face on camera—I had completely blocked out and forgotten the aftermath of that first Girl Meets World table read. Completely had forgotten it until we were sitting down to interview Frank Pace about my directing career and what he saw in me and kind of all of that stuff, and he was like, ‘Well, you remember the Girl Meets World table read was a disaster,’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

And he then walked me through what that was like, and it was like there had been a door, there was like an art piece over a door, and I just had walked by the art piece for years, and then all of a sudden he was like, ‘Well, you know there’s a door back there,’ and then the minute he opened the door, and I was like, ‘I forgot this room existed.’ Then it all came back to me, and you see it happen on my face, where I’m like, I do, I remember it, and that was very emotional for me.

Fishel, Strong, and Friedle also spoke about their estrangement from Savage, which, as they discuss in the documentary, has been going on for years. However, they expressed that they continue to have hope that this relationship will one day change.

Danielle Fishel: I don’t think it’s the end of our story. We have until we’re dead in the ground.

Will Friedle: We hope. We hope. We all do; we definitely do. But no, as of now, nothing yet.

The costars also shared that they will be releasing a book in the near future, called Book Meets World, which Fishel described as “a CliffsNotes of the podcast mixed with brand-new interviews, pictures that have never been seen before, topics we haven’t discussed on the show…kind of an all-encompassing guide to Boy Meets World as discovered through the lens of Pod Meets World.”

Strong also confirmed that the documentary will go on tour, with theatrical releases as well as Strong, Fishel, and Friedle traveling and offering Q&As around the country.

Doc Meets World will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 6.