“Boy Meets World” alum Danielle Fishel confessed that she turned to “purging” and “overexercising” after she alleged that the creator of the show, Michael Jacobs, pointed out her weight gain.
Fishel, who played the iconic Topanga Lawrence on the hit coming-of-age sitcom, detailed in a new tell-all book that she became obsessed with her appearance after Jacobs told her and her co-star, Will Friedle (who played Eric Matthews), that they had both packed on some pounds between Seasons 6 and 7.
“Will had gained some weight. I had gained some weight,” Fishel, 45, wrote in “Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World,” per Entertainment Weekly.
“[Jacobs said,] ‘Obviously, you guys have gained a little bit of weight, so we’re going to write an episode about it, and we just wanted you to know,’” Fishel recalled in the book, which she co-authored with Friedle, Rider Strong and collaborator Emily Longeretta.
As a result, the show produced the Season 7 episode “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs.” In the episode, Fishel and Friedle’s characters go on a secret diet together and Fishel’s onscreen beau, Cory Matthews (played by Ben Savage) misinterprets her comments to believe she is pregnant.
Fishel remembered crying about Jacobs’ alleged comments, which she said triggered a yearlong struggle with eating.
The actress, who was only 18 years old at the time, said she was a size 4.
“So I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight to write an entire episode about it,’ and right now I have to say I’m fine with it, because they didn’t even present me another alternative. And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that,’” she explained.
Fishel revealed that she passed out at school after running one day, admitting that she had “not been eating.”
“One hundred fifteen pounds at five-foot-one is by no means overweight, but the camera does make you look bigger, and my body type changed over the years,” Fishel wrote.
“I can’t believe I felt as bad as I did. I can’t believe I spent most of my day feeling bad about myself,” she continued.
However, the actress shared that costume designer Julie Yang Silver and co-worker Karen MacKain were fierce advocates for her while on set.
Friedle, on the other hand, admitted that the episode had the both of them “dying inside.”
“We both laughed and went, ‘I guess we’re doing it,’ while we both were just dying inside,” Friedle wrote.
“But the fact that I was fat was the fifteenth thing on my list [of what] was wrong with me by Season 7. There was so much else going on that the fact that I needed to lose 20 pounds was so far down on the list,” he wrote.
At the time, Friedle said he was battling anxiety and panic attacks.
Page Six reached out to reps for Fishel and ABC for comment.
“Boy Meets World” ran for 7 seasons on ABC from 1993 to 2000, spanning 158 episodes.
The series spawned a sequel, “Girl Meets World,” which aired on the Disney Channel for 72 episodes across three seasons between 2014 and 2017.
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