Boy Meets World alum Danielle Fishel looked back on leaving an “unhealthy relationship” when she was 19.
“This was a rough year for Danielle, personally,” Fishel, 45, recalled on the Thursday, August 13, episode of the “Pod Meets World” podcast. “I was in a very bad, unhealthy relationship that also then ended around … the end 2000 or beginning of 2001.”
Fishel remembered that she was “not auditioning at all” around the time Boy Meets World finished its seven season run in 2000. Instead, she was trying to pick up the pieces from a relationship that had taken an emotional toll on her.
“It was a really rough rough time,” she remembered. “And then I left Beverly Hills and I moved to Sherman Oaks, and I left in such a rush that my mom actually had to find my apartment for me and … I [didn’t see it] until I moved in. So I moved, and then I moved into this apartment that she picked.”
She added, “That year was not a fun year, not a year I like revisiting at all.”
Her cohosts Rider Strong and Will Friedle asked whether Fishel faced any pressure from her agent to get back to work.
“Not that I remember,” she clarified. “I know, for sure, I had said, ‘I don’t want anything. I don’t want to audition for anything. I’m just done for a little bit.’ And I don’t remember there being a lot of pushback.”
Fishel pointed out this upheaval in her personal and professional life occurred at the same time as she switched from having “a kid’s agent” to going out for older parts.
“For me to say, like, ‘I’m in a holding pattern. I’m not sure what I’m going to do,’ we just kind of put that on hold,” she said. “And then I did eventually sign with the Young Talent department at Innovative, which was run by Abby Bluestone, who is still there and she’s amazing.”
Fishel has frequently been quite vulnerable about her past — and her work on Boy Meets World. In May, she spoke to Us about the way TV executives flippantly discussed her body on set when she was a teenager.
“I was aware, even if nobody said it to me directly… that as far as the people in power were concerned, my body was a problem… I remember around the time of [1998’s] prom episode being aware that they didn’t want me wearing something sleeveless,” she remembered.
In more recent years, Fishel tied the knot with her second husband, comedian and rapper Jensen Karp, in 2018. They are parents to two sons — Adler, 7, and Keaton, 4.
“Pod Meets World” releases new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
