Key Takeaways
- Rider Strong says hosting the rewatch podcast Pod Meets World with Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle helped him stop running from his Shawn Hunter past and instead fully embrace his ’90s Boy Meets World legacy.
- He describes feeling newly “welcomed by the world” through fans who grew up with the show, even as he and his co-hosts remain hurt and confused by Ben Savage cutting off contact and refusing to join the podcast.
- Strong frames ’90s nostalgia as a longing for a pre-smartphone era when people were less reachable but more present, a vibe he’s now leaning into on and off camera.
For years, Rider Strong wanted nothing to do with being remembered as Shawn Hunter. These days, he's leaning into it—and says revisiting Boy Meets World has transformed his relationship with fame and fans. The actor is embracing his '90s legacy in a new nostalgia-themed campaign, but the bigger story is how completely his perspective has changed since launching the Pod Meets World four years ago.
"I'm all about embracing the '90s in my life right now," Strong told People. "I spent so much of my 20s and 30s avoiding the fact that I was on a TV show and trying to forget that, and the world hasn't let me forget."
That mindset flipped after he teamed up with former castmates Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle to revisit every episode of the beloved sitcom. What began as a rewatch podcast has turned into a second act for the show's core cast, reconnecting them with a generation of fans who grew up alongside Cory, Shawn, Topanga, and Eric.
"It's just changed my life so much for the better," Strong said of Pod Meets World. "I was always scared of being famous and scared of being associated with this time in people's lives that I just wanted to move away from. And instead, now I feel welcomed by the world and I have this loving relationship with tons of strangers who feel like they grew up with me."
Ironically, that renewed appreciation for Boy Meets World has unfolded against one of the franchise's biggest off-screen storylines. Earlier this summer, the documentary Doc Meets World pulled back the curtain on the cast's long-running estrangement from former co-star Ben Savage. In the film, Strong says communication with Savage deteriorated after the podcast launched in 2022.
"Ben refused to do the podcast, but we still communicated with him, [were] still on friendly terms, we thought," Strong says in the documentary. "He unfollowed us on Instagram and blocked our phone numbers. I feel sorry that he's missing out on the experience that Danielle and Will and I are having."
Friedle has shared a similar sense of confusion, previously revealing he repeatedly called and texted Savage because, as he put it, "We didn't have a fight. There's no falling out. There was no animosity."
For Strong, though, the conversation has become less about what was lost and more about what was rediscovered. Looking back, he believes the '90s continue to resonate because they captured a version of life that's hard to recreate today.
"It was the last time before cell phones and before social media and constant contact," he said. "Not having cell phones is incredibly inconvenient, but it also made you so much more present wherever you were."
