Boy Meets World actress Danielle Fishel opened up about "creepy" experiences on the set of the sitcom, and revealed one executive told her he was waiting for her to turn 18.
On the latest episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, Fishel and her co-hosts and fellow Boy Meets World stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle were interviewed by the fan podcast Bruh Meets World, who asked them about what it was like to be "an object of desire at such a young age."
Fishel, who was cast in the show as Topanga Lawrence when she was 12, said she didn't really think about that aspect of being a child star in a sitcom for teens until she was older. Looking back, she realized that there were more than a few instances that adult men were being "creepy" toward her.
“As a kid, I always wanted to be older,” she shared at around the 44-minute mark of the podcast. “I wanted to be an adult, I wanted to be seen as an adult, so getting adult male attention as a teenage girl… I didn’t think of it as being creepy or weird. I felt it like was validation that I was mature and I was an adult and I was capable. And that they were seeing me the way I was, not for the number on a page. And in hindsight, that is absolutely wrong.”
Her co-hosts pointed out that she was emotionally mature when she worked on the series. “I’ve always been able to hold a conversation with an adult. I can look you in the eye, I’ve always been those things," Fishel continued. "But in a romantic, male gaze sense I should not have been outwardly talked about at 14, 15, 16 years old. And I was, even directly to me. I had people tell me they had my 18th birthday on their calendar. I had a male executive, I did a calendar at 16, and he specifically told me he had a certain calendar month in his bedroom. And at the time, my first thought was a little like …oh… but the immediate thought after that was: ‘Yes, because we are peers and this is how you relate to peers.’"
This isn't the first time Fishel has discussed some of the mistreatment she faced on the set of Boy Meets World. On an episode of the podcast last year, she said there was a huge "pay disparity" between her and her male co-stars. "I had to threaten to not show up to a table read," she said, per Yahoo News.
Listen to the full podcast below.
