Danielle Fishel has opened up about the eating disorder she developed after “Boy Meets World” creator Michael Jacobs allegedly singled out her weight gain to her face.
The actress, 45, who played Topanga Lawrence across all seven seasons of the ABC sitcom, disclosed in her new memoir that Jacobs approached her and co-star Will Friedle, 48, between Seasons 6 and 7 to inform them they had both put on pounds. Fishel was just 18 years old at the time and said she wore a size 4.
“Will had gained some weight. I had gained some weight,” Fishel wrote in “Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World,” which she co-authored with Friedle, Rider Strong and Emily Longeretta.
“[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,'” she recalled in the book.
The conversation directly spawned the Season 7 episode “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs,” which featured Topanga and Eric Matthews attempting a secret diet together while Cory Matthews misread her behavior as a pregnancy announcement. Fishel remembered crying after Jacobs’ remarks and said they launched a yearlong battle with disordered eating.
“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,” Fishel explained in the memoir. “And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that.'”
She turned to purging and excessive exercise to control her body, eventually collapsing at school after a run when she had “not been eating.” Fishel noted that at 115 pounds and five-foot-one, she was medically not overweight, though she acknowledged that camera lenses added visual weight and that her frame had naturally shifted over the years.
“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 in the book.
Friedle, who played the older Matthews brother, corroborated the emotional toll of the episode in his own contribution to the memoir. He was contending with anxiety and panic attacks at the time and ranked his weight far below other concerns.
“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 added.
Fishel also credited two women on set for their support during that period. Costume designer Julie Yang Silver and co-worker Karen MacKain were fierce advocates for her while working on the show, she shared.
“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.
The memoir arrives as the original series maintains a devoted following nearly three decades after its 1993 premiere. “Boy Meets World” ran for 158 episodes through 2000 and spawned Disney Channel sequel “Girl Meets World,” which aired 72 episodes from 2014 to 2017 and brought Fishel back as an adult Topanga.
Fishel and her co-authors have been promoting the memoir across podcast and interview platforms since its release.