Girls meet drama.
“Boy Meets World” alums Danielle Fishel and Maitland Ward got into a heated argument on Monday’s episode of the “Pod Meets World” podcast, which Fishel, 43, co-hosts with former co-stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle.
The back-and-forth began when Fishel asked Ward, “Do you hate us?”
Ward, who played Rachel McGuire on the ABC sitcom and then became an adult film star, responded, “No, I do not hate you. I think that you hate me, because you wouldn’t speak to me on ‘Girl Meets World,’ and that was hurtful.”
Fishel denied that she ignored Ward on the set of the spinoff series that aired from 2014 to 2017.
Ward then brought up that she sent Fishel a congratulatory message on Facebook back in 2013 after her wedding to her first husband, Tim Belusko, and didn’t hear back from her. But Fishel insisted she didn’t see the message until 2022 when Friedle, 48, told her about Ward possibly coming on the podcast.
Ward, according to Fishel, told Friedle she wanted to save talking about her issues with Fishel “for the podcast” to “rock the stats,” which Ward partly denied.
“You did not speak to meet on the set of ‘Girl Meets World,’ except for, ‘Hi,’” Ward again claimed to Fishel. “That’s it. I have no pictures with you on that set. You were at my wedding and I thought we were friends.
“You had an attitude about it,” Ward alleged. “There was some beef between us, and I didn’t get it. Maybe I picked up the wrong signals, but definitely there was some weirdness there.”
Ward also told Fishel, “I didn’t know if you thought I was trying to come on the set and steal attention or something. I was very genuinely confused why we wouldn’t be good.”
But Fishel fired back at Ward and insisted she didn’t have a problem with her on the set of the spinoff.
“I don’t feel as though I was not good with you. But I definitely didn’t have a relationship with you where I was like ‘Oh my gosh my long lost friend!’” said Fishel.
“I was working. It was a very, very difficult set,” she explained. “Let’s put it this way, the memories we have of the fun set of ‘Boy Meets World’ were not the memories of the fun set of ‘Girl Meets World.’ It just wasn’t. I went into it hoping it was going to be, and it just wasn’t. It was a rather tumultuous place. It was a place I felt very ostracized. I felt very criticized.”
The bickering only continued when Ward told Fishel, “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,” which Fishel strongly disputed.
The conversation then turned to Ward’s interviews with TMZ where she’s talked about about Fishel and some of their other former cast members.
When Fishel asked Ward how those TMZ chats came about, Ward replied, “Are you trying to accuse me of using you, or are you trying to accuse me of something?”
“It seems as thought every time we’ve been in the news, shortly there after there’s an interview with you on TMZ sharing your opinion on the subject,” said Fishel.
Ward then told Fishel and her co-hosts that part of the reason for the tension is because they “hate” former co-star Ben Savage and show creator Michael Jacobs.
“We absolutely do not hate either of them,” Fisher insisted.
Friedle finally chimed in and explained, “Ben is one of the most important people I’ve ever met in my life, and I can’t stand the fact that he won’t speak to us. And that’s what it is: He won’t speak to us,” he said. “I can show you the last three years, literally, of messages and in the middle of a conversation with Ben, he just bailed on me. Ben absolutely one day woke up and said, ‘I don’t want Will in my life,’ and never told me why.”
As things got even more heated, Ward said she felt like she was being subjected to a “grilling session” and accused Fishel of her co-hosts of “trying to go at me now to get the ratings because you know that people will be interested..”
“No Maitland, sorry. I’m not the one who wanted to go for ratings,” Fishel said, adding, “This is what you asked for.” Fishel also accused Ward of dragging their names through the mud in the press.
At the end of the episode, Fishel thanked Ward for coming on the podcast and invited her to return.
Once Ward left, Fishel told Friedle and Strong, “She felt like this was an opportunity for her to get press by having conflict, which I am just not your girl to do that.”
“And she thought it was disingenuous for me to reach out to her,” Fishel added. “I think wanting to do it for stats is disingenuous.”
In a first for “Pod Meets World,” the episode title came with a warning that read, “This episode contains a bunch of adult language and subject matter. Please proceed with caution.”
