Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Danielle Fishel was seen as “difficult” after setting out clear boundaries for Girl Meets World filming.
The 45-year-old star has recalled reprising her role as Topanga Lawrence on the spinoff 14 years after Boy Meets World came to an end, as she reunited with Ben Savage after working together on the original Disney sitcom.
In an extract from Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World shared by Variety, she said: “I was very, very much looking forward to doing Girl Meets World, and to having a partnership with Ben, where we were two adults on a kids’ show who could be examples of professionalism, showing that you can grow up and be normal in the industry.”
However, she claimed he was still very much like he was as a teenager, and while “there are pros to that”, she was in a different place.
She explained: “Ways that I had matured may have made me boring, but they definitely also made me more professional.”
On Boy Meets World – which originally ran from 1993 to 2000 – the teen cast would innocently tackle each other, but Danielle wanted to draw a line under that behaviour for the spinoff, which had three seasons between 2014 and 2017.
She added: “Things like that would happen on Girl Meets World, and I was now a married woman. I then started creating boundaries. And those boundaries apparently made me ‘difficult.’”
Danielle insisted people on set “were uncomfortable around” her, and she knew she wasn’t liked.
She continued: “I knew they rolled their eyes at me when I would raise my hand with a note. I knew they were dismissive of me, but I didn’t know what they were saying behind my back.”
During the second season, she found out that Michael Jacobs, who co-created both shows with April Kelly, was calling her “crazy” in conversations with others.
Danielle noted that people “respected” her stance, which included extending Disney’s no hugging rule for employees at the time, requesting that no one hugged her on set.
She recalled: “People respected it. But you would have thought I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to look me in the eyes anymore.’”
