Maitland Ward, Danielle Fishel Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images;VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images
Boy Meets World star Maitland Ward is reflecting on her tense reunion with costar Danielle Fishel.
“I’m a little — I won’t say shaken up or anything. I’m just surprised by the whole situation, and I’ve had a little time to reflect on it since I did the show a week and a half ago,” Ward told TooFab in an interview published Tuesday, February 25. “It just felt uneasy to have people that you called friends — especially in the past, I thought Danielle was my friend — I can see that she did not like me, and she has harbored not liking me through the years, but it’s sad to me too.”
Just one day earlier, Boy Meets World fans listened to Ward, 48, reunite with Fishel, 43, on her iHeartRadio “Pod Meets World” podcast. Things took a turn when the pair began rehashing their ongoing feud with Ward claiming that Fishel unfriended her on Facebook — which Fishel denied.
“I just wanna say I did not come on that show to create controversy and to drum anything up at that time and I think fans can see that,” Ward said in her latest interview. “The first part of the show was very friendly. That’s why it was such a weird switch at the end.”
Boy Meets World became a family sitcom phenomenon during its seven-season run on ABC from 1993 to 2000. Created by Michael Jacobs, the show followed the life and life lessons of Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) from home with parents Alan (William Russ) and mother Amy (Betsy Randle) to school with neighbor and forever-teacher George Feeny […]
While the headlines surrounding the podcast focus on Fishel, Ward said she is also disappointed in former costar Will Friedle. According to the actress, Friedle, 48, presented the podcast opportunity as something that would be “fun.”
“I thought, like, any problems we had, we would talk in a conversational way, so I wasn’t expecting such a jarring shift,” Ward claimed. “It was like, all of a sudden she was Topanga and then she switched into [Mean Girls’] Regina George.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Fishel’s team for comment.
In addition to appearing in Boy Meets World together, Ward and Fishel also appeared in Girl Meets World, which aired on Disney from 2014 to 2017. While filming the spinoff, the pair were not the closest costars.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Danielle Fishel may have many fond memories of her time on Boy Meets World, but returning for the show’s spinoff, Girl Meets World, was an entirely different — and “difficult” — experience. After portraying the role of Topanga for seven seasons on the ABC ‘90s hit, Fishel, 43, returned for the Disney […]
“I am sorry that you thought I had something personally against you,” Fishel said on the “Pod Meets World” podcast, to which Ward replied, “Listen, you didn’t like the fact that I was getting a lot of attention at that time and going off in my own space and taking away that attention.”
Despite the tense conversation, Ward is open to appearing on the podcast again in the future.
“I am not a coward about these things and I would do it,” she said. “I definitely think there’s more to be said on the matter, and I think it has to be approached in a more adult way. There are big problems in the world, and we were discussing at length whether or not she unfriended me on Facebook. These were kind of petty matters in a lot of ways, but I think we can have a deeper conversation.”
