Danielle Fishel MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images
Danielle Fishel got a major pay bump between the fourth and fifth seasons of Boy Meets World — but it wasn’t easy.
Fishel, 43, along with former costars and current “Pod Meets World” podcast hosts Will Friedle and Rider Strong, spoke with famed talent agent Judy Savage during the episode released on Monday, July 15.
Prior to their interview, Fishel revealed that she didn’t have “the contract everyone thought I deserved” during the early days of the show because of the agent she had. (Fishel played Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World 1993 to 2000 and was upped to a main cast member in season 2.)
“I switched over [to Savage] and immediately she had my salary doubled,” she continued during Monday’s podcast episode. “In short, she is a baller.”
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Savage revealed that when she first started representing Fishel, the actress was “at a really low number” in terms of salary.
“Boy Meets World” cast. YouTube
“You had to double my salary between, I think, seasons 4 and 5,” Fishel added. “I went from making $7,500 an episode to making $15,000 an episode.”
The negotiation came “right down to the wire,” she recalled.
“I had to threaten to not show up to a table read,” Fishel continued, noting that she was “very nervous” about making the threat. “I didn’t want to lose the job. I was willing to do it for whatever. I was like, ‘Whatever, I don’t get to see this money anyway. It’s going into an account. Please just don’t lose this job for me.’ I remember crying on the phone to you and my dad saying, ‘I’m going to trust you. But just please don’t lose this job for me.’”
Even though Fishel significantly increased her pay during the show, she “never” matched what the rest of her costars made.
“I always made less than everyone else on the show,” she continued. “And they said it’s because of where I started. I started at a low threshold. I was never going to get up from there.”
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This is hardly the first time that Fishel discussed her Boy Meets World salary on the podcast.
“We’ve talked about it before privately, but if you guys knew the pay disparity, even after I became a series regular,” she shared during an August 2022 episode. “The excuse was, ‘We didn’t know you were going to be on the show, we weren’t anticipating you.’ But by season 2, you did know. By season 2, I was accounted for.”
She added, “I get that in season 1 I wasn’t part of the budget. You weren’t anticipating having another series regular, but by season 2 … that excuse should go out the window, and then season 3 rolled around, and they were using the same excuse.”
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