Ben Savage is making no effort to remain a part of the beloved Boy Meets World family, according to a new interview with three of its prominent cast members and Pod Meets World hosts. “He just kind of disappeared from our lives,” Danielle Fishel, now 42, told Variety in a new group interview. The actress, who played Topanga, noted that he’d been there for her when her first child was in the newborn intensive care unit, back in 2019. “We were just so, so close, especially during that time,” she told the outlet. “He was checking in with me regularly.” Then, he stopped, she said. And it’s been three years since any of them have spoken to him. “He ghosted us,” she remarked.
Will Friedle, who played Eric Matthews on the sitcom, claims he made strenuous efforts to stay in touch with the show’s lead character. “He disappeared — I wish I knew why, to this day,” he explained. “We didn’t have a fight. There’s no falling out. There was no animosity. He just woke up one day, and decided ‘I don’t want this person in my life anymore.'” Will’s solution was to continue calling him until he got a response. Only to this day, he says he hasn’t gotten one.
“I finally sent a text saying, ‘I’ve known you for 30 years, what’s going on?’” he said. “I said, ‘I’m gonna call you every day until you tell me not to call you anymore.’ That lasted about three weeks or a month, every single day.”
Apparently, the silence came after the Will, Danielle, and Rider Strong began tossing around the idea for the podcast, which Ben was “adamant” was “not for him,” according to Danielle. The podcast premiered in June of 2022, and has served as a platform for the cast to recount BTS experiences and unite fans of the show. Still, Danielle added, Ben didn’t want his refusal to participate to stop the others from doing it. “The time between those conversations and the time we actually started the podcast was a significant amount of time,” she added.
Will seemed especially hurt by the eventual lapse in communication, calling it a “sore subject.” “I’ve known him since he was 11 years old, and we have a shared history,” he said. “And we were doing these conventions together, and we were getting to know each other as adults, and then he just kind of went, I’m done with you. I tried and tried and tried for months, until finally my wife was like, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself? He obviously doesn’t want you in his life.’”
Danielle admitted to being hopeful that one day the cast would reunite with Ben, who married Tessa Angermeier earlier this year. “Speaking for myself, Ben and I may be estranged right now and we may have our complaints about each other, but I will always love Ben and want what’s best for him,” she said. “I don’t think this is the end of our story — but time will tell.”