‘Boy Meets World’ Star Danielle Fishel Recalls Adult Male Coworkers Telling Her They Counted Down to Her 18th Birthday

Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel is sharing some of the “creepy” behavior she was victim to on the set of the sitcom, revealing that even as a teenager, an executive told her he was waiting for her to turn 18. Fishel, now 42, opened up about her experience playing Topanga Lawrence during the most recent Pod Meets World podcast episode alongside her fellow Boy Meets World co-stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle.

Asked what it was like to become “an object of desire at such a young age” after being cast as Topanga at just age 12, Fishel said she didn’t think much about that aspect of child stardom until she was older, which is when she realized there were many instances of adult men being “creepy” to her. 

“As a kid, I always wanted to be older,” she shared. “I wanted to be an adult, I wanted to be seen as an adult, so getting adult male attention as a teenage girl… I didn’t think of it as being creepy or weird. I felt it like was validation that I was mature and I was an adult and I was capable. And that they were seeing me the way I was, not for the number on a page. And in hindsight, that is absolutely wrong.”

“I’ve always been able to hold a conversation with an adult. I can look you in the eye, I’ve always been those things,” Fishel continued. “But in a romantic, male gaze sense I should not have been outwardly talked about at 14, 15, 16 years old. And I was, even directly to me. I had people tell me they had my 18th birthday on their calendar. I had a male executive, I did a calendar at 16, and he specifically told me he had a certain calendar month in his bedroom. And at the time, my first thought was a little like …oh… but the immediate thought after that was: ‘Yes, because we are peers and this is how you relate to peers.’”

Looking at how her childhood in the spotlight ultimately impacted her, Fishel said it made it difficult for her to set boundaries. “I didn’t want anyone to think that I thought I was better than them or that they were not good enough for me,” she explained, adding that it wasn’t until her late 30s that she began to address the aftermath of her experiences.