‘Boy Meets World’ Star Recalls ‘Breakdown’ He Had on Set

Rider Strong is opening up about his “breakdown” on the set of Boy Meets World.

Revisiting Season 6, Episode 14 of the sitcom during Thursday’s episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, which Strong hosts alongside co-stars Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle, the actor revealed he reached a breaking point as his character, Shawn Hunter, dealt with the aftermath of the death of his father (Blake Clark).

Learning during the episode that his brother Jack (Matthew Lawrence) had been the one paying for his college, not his father, Shawn is upset and devastated at what he sees as a betrayal. But despite all the drama with his character, Strong admitted he was feeling “really bored” with Shawn’s story.

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“What’s funny is, in retrospect, this is actually a well-written episode for Shawn,” he recalled on the podcast. “He’s finally expressing something. But I remember during rehearsal, I just lost it. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m saying the same thing every week.’”

Strong admitted his breakdown could have just been due to him being “tired of being on the show,” remembering, “I was like, ‘Why [do] they keep throwing drama at me?’ Now looking at it, this is on the heels of an episode where they killed my father and really put a lot of pressure on us as actors, pressure on Blake and Matt and me.”

Strong says that looking back, he didn’t have “a problem with the way the scene was written,” but more was “just feeling all this pressure to suddenly have to do all this drama.”

Fishel joked that the show’s dramatic tone could have led to it being called “The Days of Our Boy Meets World,” while Friedle related to Strong’s frustration over his character.

“This just shows how self-absorbed we kind of were as people and as actors because I would sit there and watch you and go, like, ‘Why don’t they give me any of that?’ Why don’t I ever get a chance to do any of that?” recalled Friedle. “Where actually, when we’re going back and watching the show, they gave me a lot of that. I had quite a bit of the dramatic stuff.”

Strong agreed, “There was an understanding on set about our talents and about our abilities, and we were kind of [pitted] against each other. … There was this sense of, ‘What are they getting over there?’ Will [was] the real comedy actor, and I felt like I wasn’t allowed to have fun.”