‘Boy Meets World’ Star Danielle Fishel Shares That a “Creepy” Male Exec Kept An Underage Calendar Pic Of Her “In His Bedroom”

On their podcast “Pod Meets World,” Boy Meets World co-stars Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle revisit specific episodes and discuss their experiences filming the show as child actors.

In their most recent episode, Fishel opened up about being “an object of desire at such a young age,” as she was casted to play her starring role of Topanga Lawrence at age 12.

“I had people tell me they had my 18th birthday on their calendar,” Fishel said. “I had a male executive — I did a calendar [shoot] at 16 — and he specifically told me he had a certain calendar month in his bedroom.”

According to Page Six, Fishel did not originally perceive this as “creepy” or “weird,” primarily out of a desire to “relate to (her) peers.”

“As a kid, I always wanted to be older,” Fishel revealed. “I always wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be seen as an adult. “So getting adult male attention as a teenage girl felt like — I didn’t think of it as being creepy or weird.”

Her fellow podcasters Strong and Friedle, who played Shawn Hunter and Eric Matthews respectively, acknowledged her maturity at such a young age. Strong called her “very mature” and “very advanced,” while Friedle shared that she was a “confident” teenager.

While Fishel agreed about her maturity and confidence, saying that she’s “always been able to hold a conversation with an adult,” she explained how the discourse surrounding her as a young actress was unacceptable.

“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.”

Fishel admitted that not until recently was she able to fully comprehend these experiences and the emotions they brought with them.

“I didn’t really process how it affected me as a teenager — or how it affected me in my 20s or even in my 30s — up until the last few years,” she explained, “and then I was really able to look back on it and connect the dots.”

She continued to elaborate on how this behavior toward her negatively influenced how she acted in her romantic relationships, particularly how it “made (her) bad at (setting) boundaries.”

“I had absolutely no expectations of how you’re supposed to talk to me, of how you’re supposed to treat me,” Fishel told Strong and Friedle. “I would stick it out for the sake of sticking it out because I didn’t want anyone to think I thought I was better than them or that they were not good enough for me.”