Will Friedle has revealed he was hospitalized last week after waking up to find blood in his urine.
The “Boy Meets World” alum, 50, shared the health scare on Thursday’s episode of his “Pod Meets World” podcast, where he disclosed doctors diagnosed him with a kidney stone. Friedle recounted getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom when he made the alarming discovery.
However, the decision to seek emergency care came only after his wife, Susan Martens, noticed he had gone pale. “I’m still in the midst of this thing,” Friedle said during the podcast recording, joking that he might need to leave early to pass the kidney stone.
According to Cleveland Clinic, blood in urine ranks among the most common symptoms of kidney stones.
The hospital stay took an unexpected turn when numerous doctors and nurses recognized him from his iconic role as Eric Matthews on the ABC sitcom. “For some reason, on this day, in that hospital, I was more famous than I’ve ever been in my life,” Friedle said.
“Talk about the perfect place to be recognized,” he joked. The attention included one nurse approaching him to perform his famous “Feeny call,” the signature chant his character directed at beloved teacher Mr. Feeny throughout the series.
This marks another instance of Friedle opening up about his health struggles publicly. The actor has been notably candid about his long-term battles with anxiety, which first surfaced during a particularly difficult period in his career.
During a January 2026 episode of “Pod Meets World,” Friedle traced his anxiety back to filming the final season of “Boy Meets World” in the late 1990s. “I was maybe six or eight weeks into anxiety, which I’d never experienced before in my life,” he said on the podcast.
“I still wasn’t talking about it. I’d been on medication for maybe a month, which is why I put on so much weight,” he added. “But my life was spiraling at this point. Badly.”
The experience fundamentally altered his career trajectory. During a 2018 appearance at New York Comic Con, Friedle explained that his anxiety drove him away from on-camera work and into voice acting, where he found refuge behind the microphone rather than in front of audiences.
In more recent years, the actor has developed strategies for managing his symptoms. “I never tell people you get over it because you never do, but you learn to cope with it in such a way where it just becomes a nuisance,” Friedle said during a June 6 interview.
The kidney stone episode represents the latest chapter in Friedle’s ongoing health transparency, blending his characteristic humor with unvarnished details about bodily realities that many public figures avoid discussing.
Friedle continues to co-host “Pod Meets World” alongside former castmates Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong, where the trio revisits episodes of the beloved coming-of-age series that ran from 1993 to 2000.