In a podcast first, “Pod Meets World” included the following warning at the top of their latest episode: “This episode contains a bunch of adult language and subject matter. Please proceed with caution.”
The Feb. 23 episode featured Maitland Ward, the actor best known as Rachel McGuire on “Boy Meets World.” After appearing on “Girl Meets World” in 2015, Ward began growing her personal brand and later went on to become an adult film star. While they did discuss that transition and her work now, it wasn’t until after that discussion that things got extremely tense.
The tone changed about 55 minutes in, when co-host Danielle Fishel asked, “Do you hate us?” Ward replied, “No, I do not hate you. I think that you hate me, because you wouldn’t speak to me on ‘Girl Meets World,’ and that was hurtful.”
From there, the pair went back and forth about their relationship through the years. First, it was about Facebook: In 2013, Ward sent a heartfelt message to Fishel on Facebook, but later realized they were no longer friends and she’d been deleted. Fishel rarely uses Facebook and didn’t see the message until 2022, when Will Friedle spoke to Ward about coming on an episode of the podcast. When he told his co-star about Ward’s message, Fishel went and found it and asked if she could have her number.
Fishel said during the podcast, “You wrote back to Will, ‘No, let’s just save it for the podcast,’” and added that Ward said it would “rock the stats.” Ward thought at the time she’d be a guest soon — not years later. However, that was just what made sense, since her character doesn’t appear until Season 6, which they just got to in their rewatch.
Ward said that she felt Fishel asking to talk was “disingenuous,” especially after she felt ignored on the “Girl Meets World” set when she believed they were friends.
“You had an attitude about it. There was some beef between us, and I didn’t get it,” Ward said of her time on the Disney Channel spinoff. “I didn’t know if you thought I was trying to steal attention… I was genuinely confused why we wouldn’t be good.”
While Fishel doesn’t remember any issue, she admitted that “Girl Meets World” was a “very difficult set” for her. “Let’s put it this way, the memories we have of the fun set of ‘Boy Meets World’ were not the memories of the fun set of ‘Girl Meets World,’” she said. “I went into it expecting it to be, and it wasn’t. It was a rather tumultuous place. I felt very ostracized. I felt very criticized. I felt a lot of different things being on that set… I am sorry that you thought I had something personally against you.”
Ward said she guessed, during that period, “You didn’t like the fact that I was getting a lot of attention at that time and going off in my own space and taking away that attention.”
Rider Strong, Ben Savage, Trina McGee, Danielle Fishel, Matthew Lawrence and Maitland Ward on Season 7 of “Boy Meets World”
©ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection
When it seemed that the conversation had smoothed over on the podcast, Fishel then brought up that Ward has spoken ill of the cast in TMZ interviews “almost any time the podcast is in the news,” and asked how that happens. Ward said that the photographers find her since there’s still so much interest in the show; she then asked Fishel, “Are you trying to accuse me of using you, or are you trying to accuse me of something?”
Ward then said she feels there’s tension because of the co-hosts’ relationships with Ben Savage and show creator Michael Jacobs. In 2023, Fishel, Friedle and Rider Strong revealed in an interview with Variety that Savage no longer speaks to them.
“I think there’s a divide too because you hate Ben and you guys hate Michael,” Ward said, which caused them all to deny that; it also led to the first response in quite some time from Friedle.
“Ben is one of the most important people I’ve ever met in my life, and I can’t stand the fact that he won’t speak to us. And that’s what it is: He won’t speak to us,” he said. “I can show you the last three years, literally, of messages and in the middle of a conversation with Ben, he just bailed on me. Ben absolutely one day woke up and said, ‘I don’t want Will in my life,’ and never told me why.”
Ward said she doesn’t listen to the podcast regularly but the few times she has, it’s a lot of negativity — another thing Fishel pushed back on. “The same way you wrote your book about your experiences doesn’t mean that they’re negative. They’re just experiences,” Fishel said. “So you don’t listen to the podcast regularly, but your overall opinion of it is that we are negative about Michael and Ben and the show.”
Ward refuted, “Let’s be honest about this. You’re trying to go at me now to get the ratings because you know that people will be interested. I just wanted to remember the good times.” Fishel responded, “I’m not the one who wanted to go for ratings… This is what you asked for.” She also said Ward wants to be positive now but in other press, “that’s the time when you want to drag our names through the mud.”
While Strong didn’t speak up much during the heated discussion, he did chime in when Ward called out the co-hosts for speaking poorly about the show’s creator. When she asked, “You’re not doing it just to get listens?” Strong responded, “No, if I’m talking about Michael yelling at me, that’s my experience. I was yelled at. I watched him do things. I can describe that, that’s the truth.”
She then reminded the group they all have careers because of Jacobs, as does she, Fishel asked, “So is the price we pay for that… silence?” Strong asked,” Dishonesty?”
Eventually, the conversation simmered down and the episode came to an end. After thanking her for coming on — and extending an invite to have her back on — Fishel was sure to state that she doesn’t hate Ward at all.
“Similarly to the way she decided when ‘Girl Meets World’ and all that stuff was in the press, that that was an opportunity for her to make a name for herself in cosplay play and in role-playing, she felt like this was an opportunity for her to get press by having conflict, which I am just not your girl to do that,” Fishel said of the heated exchange. “And she thought it was disingenuous for me to reach out to her. I think wanting to do it for stats is disingenuous.”
