What Really Happened To Danielle Fishel From Boy Meets World

Back in the mid-1990s, Danielle Fishel was the kind of star that every young teenage girl wanted to be best friends with and every young teenage boy wanted to date. Indeed, as Cory Matthews' forever love Topanga Lawrence in "Boy Meets World," the actor quickly became one of the most popular stars of the TGIF era.

Once the coming-of-age sitcom came of age, Fishel became a regular of the National Lampoon franchise, appearing in both the bawdy comedy "Dorm Daze" and its sequel, played Elizabeth Taylor in a memorable episode of E!'s snarky entertainment review "The Soup" and voiced the lead character in the animated film "The Chosen One."

But in recent years, Fishel and her winning smile have largely been absent from our screens. From business ventures and books to parenting and podcasts, here's a look at why the former ABC favorite appears to have stepped away from the limelight.

While many of us no doubt still think of Danielle Fishel as the doe-eyed schoolgirl Topanga Lawrence in "Boy Meets World," the actor is now a forty-something mother of two! Yes, the star first got to experience the joys of parenthood when she gave birth to her son Adler in 2019. Two years later, she and her husband, Jensen Karp, welcomed a second boy into the world, Keaton.

In an interview with Parents, Fishel admitted she's aware that any attempts to become the ideal mom are futile: "I think the best advice I got is that you're human, and you're always going to be human. I'm a perfectionist, and it's very hard for me now with kids to not feel like every mistake I make [is huge], letting it eat me alive. That I'm going to ruin my kids, like, 'Oh, my gosh! I shouldn't have snapped the 700th time he said my name.'"

Fishel also offered some advice to other new parents, which perhaps explains why she hasn't been in the limelight much as of late: "The first couple of years of their life, revolve your life around your kids. Then you can start to have a life again."

Danielle Fishel might have only racked up a handful of on-screen credits over the last decade. But she has been adding to her filmography in another area. Yes, since making her directorial debut on an episode of "Girl Meets World," the star has become far more interested in calling the shots.

In fact, Fishel has taken the director's chair on pretty much every Disney Channel sitcom in recent years, including "Raven's Home," "Sydney to the Max," and "Coop and Cami Ask the World." And in an interview with Romper, the star explained how she's been able to draw upon her own experiences as a child star in her new role: "I try to bring that fun and that energy and that enthusiasm that I had as a teenager to the work that I do now because I work with those teenagers that I once was."

And Fishel also has an important piece of advice for the new generation of teen stars — enjoy every moment. "Any time in my life, both personally and professionally, where I have felt like I'm starting to take something for granted, I remind myself, 'You did this with the end of "Boy Meets World." Don't do it now because one day you're going to look back, and you're going to wish you had those moments back.' I think it's such an important lesson for teenagers and for me, even now as an adult."

Danielle Fishel got caught up in a "Boy Meets World" racism row in 2020 when Trina McGee, who played Shawn's girlfriend, Angela Moore, claimed that she'd experienced prejudice while filming the ABC sitcom back in the 1990s and then again when she returned for its 2010s spinoff "Girl Meets World."

McGee revealed she was labeled everything from "Aunt Jemima" to a "bitter b****," repeatedly blanked and essentially treated "like a stranger" while filming the latter despite being a cast member for almost 60 episodes of its predecessor. Will Friedle later, who played Corey's older brother Eric, later admitted to and apologized for calling her the racist term, while Fishel confessed to him being the most unwelcoming culprit.

In response to a tweet about the scandal, the actor posted, "I owed Trina McGee an apology for being rude, cold, and distant when she guest starred on GMW (her tweet regarding warm hellos being met with cold blank stares was about me)." Fishel also later told Insider that the cast, including McGee, are now closer than ever: "The things that have come out of those conversations, the tears that have been shed, the hugs that we've had, the closeness it has brought us, has been some of my favorite moments of the last several years."

You might have only seen Danielle Fishel acting on the small screen in one show over the past decade — Disney Channel spin-off "Girl Meets World" as the returning Topanga Lawrence-Matthews. But you might have heard her voice elsewhere.

In 2015, Fishel lent her Arizona twang to the three-part finale of the second season of "Gravity Falls," "Weirdmageddon." The star played Pyronica, a bright pink demon who causes chaos as part of the villainous Bill Cipher's team before getting sucked back into a dimensional rift. And then four years later, the star voiced a slightly less monstrous character, a librarian, in the "Kelly's World" episode of "Star vs. The Forces of Evil."

Fishel wasn't a complete novice in this field. In 2007, she voiced heroine Donna Goldstein in "The Chosen One," an animated action comedy that also co-starred the likes of Tim Curry, Laura Prepon, and Traci Lords. 

You could never accuse Danielle Fishel of playing the fame game. Whereas some celebrities will alert paparazzi photographers to their whereabouts to maximize publicity, the "Girl Meets World" star does her best to completely avoid them.

Speaking alongside former boyfriend Lance Bass in a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone, Fishel revealed how relieved she was to have largely swerved the most privacy-invading part of the showbiz world: "I was out of the public eye for the most part by the time paparazzi even started. "Boy Meets World" ended in 2000, and really, paparazzi stuff didn't start until '99, 2000. I'm really glad that I was never a major target for that stuff because I wouldn't have done well with it."

Fishel went on to explain that being photographed without consent provokes a strong reaction, both emotionally and physically: "I fully panic. I get scared. And then, I'm angry. They're trying to talk to me, and they want an interview, and my heart's racing, and I'm frustrated that they just jumped out and really scared me."

As well as directing a whole host of Disney Channel tweens and looking after two tots of her own, Danielle Fishel has been keeping busy away from the screens with the creation of her own hair care range. In 2019, the "Girl Meets World" star launched Be Free, a line of products including scalp refresher, conditioner, and shampoo free from any potentially harmful ingredients.

In an interview with Today to promote her new business venture, Fishel explained that motherhood had influenced her entrepreneurial spirit: "I was inspired by the first ultrasound I had at eight weeks pregnant. I remember the moment of hearing my son's little heartbeat and realizing that every decision I made from there on out wouldn't only affect me but him too. It was the first time I really started caring about using safe and clean products."

Fishel, of course, became famous for her locks during her "Boy Meets World" days, something which she admits caught her off guard: "I realized it around the time that we did the haircut episode ("Hair Today, Goon Tomorrow"). People started telling me that they were bringing pictures of me from magazines and asking their stylist for that haircut. I had never heard of that before."

It seems like you can't call yourself a celebrity these days unless you have your very own podcast. And in 2022, Danielle Fishel joined the revolution by teaming up with former "Boy Meets World" castmates Rider Strong and Will Friedle to launch "Pod Meets World."

As you can probably guess by its title, the podcast sees the trio, who played Topanga Lawrence, Shawn Hunter, and Eric Matthews, respectively, recap and reminisce about their former TGIF days. In an interview with Hollywood Life, Fishel explained how the fan convention circuit had inspired the throwback: "We were so lucky during the conventions to be able to have fans come up to us and tell us their personal stories about what the show meant in their life. Some of them are very deep and very heavy and very personal."

Fishel, speaking nearly 30 years after "Boy Meets World" made its ABC debut, went on to add, "It was kind of those conversations that made us turn and look at each other and think, 'What are ours? What are our experiences with it? What are our memories of it? What did it mean to our lives as well?' I think hearing how much it meant to other people was kind of like, we've never really sat and talked about what it's meant to us."

Some stars of bygone TV shows make a concerted effort to distance themselves from their past in order to further their career. Danielle Fishel, however, is more than happy to lean into all the nostalgia surrounding TGIF favorite "Boy Meets World."

The star, who played Corey's childhood sweetheart Topanga Lawrence, has joined castmates Rider Strong and Will Friedle to host recap podcast "Pod Meets World," reunited with former on-screen love interest Ben Savage for a Valentine's Day ad for Panera bread and, of course, appeared in and directed several episodes of spin-off "Girl Meets World."

Speaking to TV Insider in 2020, Fishel explained why she's still so invested in the show which launched her to fame: "There are so many characters that would really bum me out to be known as when I look back at the course of TV. Topanga was so cool. I'm so lucky that's the character I'm known for. I feel the same way about the lessons. We were so lucky we had the writers we had, who cared about the audience and never wanted to talk down to the audience. Who insisted on keeping the episodes real and tried to get as much into those 22 minutes as they possibly could without making it too cheesy."

Before agreeing to reprise her role of Topanga Lawrence-Matthews for the "Boy Meets World" spin-off "Girl Meets World," Danielle Fishel had all but abandoned her acting career. In fact, the star had just applied for her Marriage and Family Therapy masters at Chapman University when she got the call about the Disney Channel show.

Fishel, who'd already graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in psychology, subsequently faced a tricky dilemma as she later told Laughing Place: "In my mind, acting and Hollywood were in the past, and I was totally fine with that. It wasn't like I was sad or disappointed. I loved school, loved psychology. I wasn't even thinking about it when suddenly I got the call from Michael (Jacobs), who said, 'Hey, I have something to tell you.' I found out the show got picked up two weeks after I got accepted to grad school. It was like being stuck between a beautiful rock and a gorgeous hard place."

As we now know, Fishel chose to show off her thespian skills once again. But the star still has ambitions to pick up her studies again, even though she acknowledges that it would be weird for any married couple to walk into her office and come face to face with a former TGIF starlet.

Back in her "Boy Meets World" days, Danielle Fishel penned a book titled "Girl Gets Real: A Teenager's Guide to Life." Well, penned might be stretching it a little, considering the presence of a ghostwriter. But nearly two decades on and the actor was determined to take full creative control of its belated follow-up.

Fishel told the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that she was initially hesitant to publish a proper memoir: "There are a lot of books that are like, 'How I Overcame My Addiction' or whatever, and I don't have any of those. What am I gonna write? 'Here's the most boring book you could possibly imagine about life in Orange County?'"

However, after being persuaded by Foundry Literary and Media agent Brandi Bowles, the TGIF favorite decided to put pen to paper. The result was "Normally, This Would be Cause for Concern: Tales of Calamity and Unrelenting Awkwardness." And on this occasion, Fishel's words were entirely her own. She added, "Everyone was hesitant — they just really wanted to make sure that I was positive I didn't want help. A lot of people asked my manager who ghostwrote my outline."

Danielle Fishel hasn't appeared in a movie since 2015's "Boiling Pot," a drama about racial tensions on a college campus. But she's been busy behind the scenes getting a film into production, and one that's slightly lighter in tone.

As she revealed on her "Pod Meets World" podcast, Fishel has teamed up with ex-boyfriend Lance Bass to work on a full-length picture based on their real-life prom experience. The actor explained, "I thought I was going to marry Lance. I had envisioned our future. I held on for hope for way too long that we were going to get back together and get married and have a family ... It turns out I'm not Lance's type."

Yes, the former NSYNC singer broke up with Fishel just two weeks after their prom date and, in 2006, came out as gay. Fishel went on to reveal how the evening in question didn't exactly turn out as planned: "Lance and I had a hotel room booked, and I had a vision for what that night was going to be, and Lance was very nervous about what my vision for that night was going to be. That is the night Lance talks about, where he felt like he was hurting me by not being honest with himself or anyone else about what was going on in his life, so it was kind of the impetus for him to say, 'I'm going to end our relationship.'"

Danielle Fishel's gal-next-door reputation took a further hit in 2022 when another co-star revealed that they'd been on the receiving end of her mean girl side. Maitland Ward, who played Topanga's friend Rachel McGuire on "Boy Meets World," claimed that her one-time pal suddenly gave her the silent treatment. And she has no idea why.

In an interview with toofab, Maitland said, "We didn't have any beef, we didn't have any falling out or anything, she came to my wedding, we were friends, she was amazing, and we have a great picture of us I cherish. But after that, she just did not want anything to do with me; she did not invite me to her wedding. I wrote her a note before her wedding, even though she didn't invite me; I just wanted to write her a note, and no response."

Maitland, who's since pivoted into the world of adult entertainment, believes that her new profession may have something to do with the snub. But in response, Fishel told the same site that she had no ill feelings toward the star: "I'm unaware of any issues between us, and when we asked her months ago if she would come on the podcast, she agreed. I can't wait to catch up with her."

Danielle Fishel has enjoyed a handful of mainstream small-screen appearances in recent years. But unless you perused the TV listings with a fine toothcomb, chances are that you missed them.

In 2018, Fishel faced off against another child star of the 1990s, "Jerry Maguire" cherubic brainbox Jonathan Lipnicki, in the first season finale of "Drop the Mic," the rap battle spin-off from "The Late Late Show with James Corden." The former was hailed the winner after throwing such shade as "You got famous from one line, and, yeah, we enjoyed it. Now the only line you're famous for is unemployment." Ouch.

Three years later, Fishel briefly popped up on a '90s-themed episode of "The Masked Singer." The "Girl Meets World" star joined former NSYNC heartthrob — and the ex-boyfriend she's now producing a semi-autobiographical movie with — Lance Bass to give clues about each of the remaining contestants' identities.

Although Danielle Fishel has added approximately a dozen further TV credits to her resume since "Boy Meets World" ended in 2000, none of them have been on ABC. So, could the dispute over payment during her TGIF days have made network executives wary of working with the star again?

During a 2022 episode of the "Pod Meets World" podcast she co-hosts with Rider Strong and Will Friedle, Fishel recalled the time she discovered her salary was far less than her male co-stars. The actor was initially told by executives that this was because they initially didn't expect her to become a series regular. But that excuse went "out the window" when her part was upgraded.

Her agent and father advised Fishel to skip a table read, a form of protest Fishel revealed she was scared to commit to. But despite warning her family that she'd never speak to them again if the move ended up getting her fired, the star went through with it. The tactic must have paid off as Fishel continued to play Topanga Lawrence until the show wrapped up its seventh and final season.