‘Boy Meets World’ Star Says His ‘Life Was Spiraling’ During Show’s Final Season

Boy Meets World star Will Friedle is opening up about “the worst year” of his life and how he was “spiraling” out during the final season of the beloved sitcom.

Friedle, who played Eric Matthews for all seven seasons of Boy Meets World, revealed to co-stars Rider Strong and Danielle Fishel on their Pod Meets World podcast that rewatching the Season 7 premiere was “very difficult” for him, as it required him to revisit “arguably the worst year of my life, just mental health-wise.”

“This was a tough watch for me all the way through, starting Season 7,” Friedle confessed. “And I know it’ll get better, but starting watching this was rough for me. This was a tough year in my life.”

“Starting the show, Season 7, I was maybe six or eight weeks into anxiety, which I’d never experienced before in my life,” Friedle explained. “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. But my life was spiraling at this point. Badly.”

Friedle then recalled an appointment with the show’s hairstylist that left him wondering if he would even be able to continue with the show.

The actor said he “had a massive panic attack in the chair,” which was happening “every 10 minutes in my life at this point.” Putting a smile on his face, Friedle excused himself to the bathroom, where he “essentially broke down.”

It was then that he was left “considering climbing out the window” and wondering how he could move forward like that.

Strong told Friedle that he had no clue at the time how much he was suffering, which Friedle said was by design.

“I still say it is the best acting I’ve ever done in my life is not letting people know that I was literally dying,” he said, adding that “this was a heavily medicated both by a doctor and self-medicated-with-alcohol-year for me. That’s why I was putting on weight and just trying to get through my life at this point.”

Friedle has been open about his mental health issues in the past, revealing in an October 2025 cast reunion at New York Comic Con that he decided to pivot to voiceover work after Boy Meets World ended due to the anxiety he suffered.

“I was planning to do more on-camera work, but then I got hit with these anxiety attacks that prevented me from doing that,” he said at the time. “I was so thankful I had voiceover because I could still perform and act.”

Friedle returned to on-camera work for Girl Meets World, a spinoff of the original show that aired from 2014 to 2017.