What These Boy Meets World Stars Look Like Today

Sorry, millennials, but you just might be old. Perhaps the greatest and most enduring touchstone of that generation, ABC's 1993 to 2000 "T.G.I.F." sitcom Boy Meets World went off the air nearly 20 years ago. That means Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel) are due for the traditional 20th anniversary gift of some fancy china, a very adult notion for the two main figures on a definitive coming-of-age sitcom and hallmark of '90s teen culture.

Boy Meets World never really went away thanks to endless reruns on the Disney Channel. In fact, the classic series was so popular in syndication, the network created a revival series called Girl Meets World, which provided updates on most all of the main characters. (Good news: Cory and Topanga lived happily ever after and had kids, while Mr. Feeny is as lovably grumpy as ever.) But what of the actors who played the Matthews clan and their various friends and associates? Here's a look into what became of the cast of Boy Meets World.

From 1993 to 2000, millions of Boy Meets World viewers met the world through fictional surrogate Cory Matthews, per the performance of Ben Savage. When the show finished up in 2000, Savage was ready to meet the world himself. "I was 19 at the time and had been on the show for seven years," he told Rolling Stone. "I was really focused on going to college." And focused on his studies he was. Savage majored in political science at prestigious Stanford University, and he interned for Senator Arlen Specter.

Savage's major post-Boy Meets World role: playing Cory Matthews again on Girl Meets World. He anchored 72 episodes of the Disney Channel sequel series about Riley Matthews, Cory and Topanga's tween daughter. Besides that, Savage showed up on other non-World-verse shows from time to time, including Chuck, Without a Trace, Bones, Speechless, and Criminal Minds, playing the younger version of Mandy Patinkin's character in a flashback.

After she finished portraying self-assured hippie Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World, Danielle Fishel stayed in the public eye as a TV host, notably the Style Network's The Soup-like The Dish. She still occasionally acts, with voice roles on Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Gravity Falls, and, of course, the return to the role that made her famous. She played Topanga once more on the Disney Channel's Girl Meets World. 

In 2012, Fishel graduated from California State University, Fullerton, where she majored in psychology, according to the Los Angeles Times. Following her graduation, Fishel penned a revealing Tumblr post about the anxiety she felt going back to school at 27 years old. "I was too afraid of being the old lady in class, of being whispered about, and especially of not remember how to do simple math equations," she wrote. 

On the home life front, Fishel married her first husband, Tim Belusko in 2013, but filed for divorce two years later. In 2018, she got hitched again, this time to writer and producer Jensen Karp. In the summer of 2019, the couple welcomed a baby boy named Adler, who was born with a frightening medical problem called chylothorax. Fishel explained the condition to People, saying it constituted "a leak in the lymphatic system." The little guy was born a month premature, and had to spend three weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit before Fishel could bring him home.

Everybody wanted a best friend like Boy Meets World's Shawn Hunter, but only Cory Matthews got to enjoy that particular bromance for the ages. Rider Strong charmingly played Shawn for seven seasons, and has kept a relatively low profile since Boy Meets World's end in 2000. He starred in several small movies, as well as the first two entries in Eli Roth's Cabin Fever horror franchise. He also put in small screen appearances on Castle, Bones, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. But Strong is about more than just acting; he's a well-rounded and very educated guy, having graduated with honors from Columbia University, and earning a Master of Fine Arts in Literature from Bennington College.

Outside of Boy Meets World, Strong's only major role in a live-action TV series came via the 2006 WB dramedy Pepper Dennis. It lasted just one short season, but it at least introduced Strong to costar Alexandra Barreto. In 2013, the couple married, and in December 2014, they welcomed a baby boy. Strong's most recent work: voicing Tom Lucitor on Disney XD's Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and occasionally returning to the role of Shawn Hunter on Girl Meets World. However, Strong was way more involved on that show behind the scenes — he directed 18 episodes of the Disney Channel series.

Will Friedle followed up his long stint as Cory's older brother, dim, sweet, happy-go-lucky Eric Matthews, with a string of guest appearances on sitcoms — the occasional episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun and Less Than Perfect. In 2003, he starred in the randy National Lampoon comedy Gold Diggers, but Friedle has since largely disappeared from the world of live-action film and TV. He's carved out a healthy and prolific career in the realm of voice acting, particularly as the man behind Batman character Terry McGinnis in various cartoon projects. (You may also recognize him as Kid Flash on Teen Titans Go!, Star-Lord in a Guardians of the Galaxy TV series, or Lion-O in a Thundercats reboot.) Friedle wound up doing that kind of work due to a potentially devastating health issue.

"What brought me to voice-over was anxiety," Friedle revealed at a Boy Meets World panel at the 2018 New York Comic Con (via Entertainment Weekly). "I was planning to do more on-camera work, but then I got hit with these anxiety attacks that prevented me from doing that. I was so thankful I had voice-over because I could still perform and act." More good news for Friedle: In 2016, he tied the knot.

For years before she landed the role of quintessential TV mom Amy Matthews on Boy Meets World, Betsy Randle paid her dues as an actress, racking up more than a dozen credits on TV shows up and down the dial. She co-starred in the pilot of long-running '80s sitcom Dear John (but did not continue in the role when the series was picked up), and did a few episodes each of Boy Meets World-esque TV comfort food like Home Improvement and Family Ties. 

Randle got her big break with Boy Meets World, and it remains her highest profile role, as of this writing. Since the show went off the air in 2000, she's acted on-screen very sparingly. She portrayed Magic School teacher and astral projection-abled witch Mrs. Winterbourne on four episodes of Charmed, appeared on two installments of Adam Ruins Everything, and reprised her role as Amy Matthews on two episodes of Girl Meets World.

Where hasn't William Russ appeared? After his seven years playing understanding, supportive, and mullet-rocking dad Alan Matthews on Boy Meets World came to a close in 2000, he hit the ground running, appearing on more than 50 TV shows and the occasional indie movie. While he hasn't landed another long-running, runaway hit in the vein of Boy Meets World, he was a member of the regular casts of the short-lived 2003 Josh Brolin political drama Mister Sterling and the 2008 CBS romantic drama The Ex List. He even briefly delved into daytime television, playing dashing tycoon Tucker McCall on The Young and the Restless. (However, he was quickly replaced, according to reports.)

Other than those semi-steady gigs, Russ has aged into playing distinguished older man roles, like lawyers and police chiefs. He played those characters on Boston Legal and Bosch respectively, alongside an episode or two of hit dramas like 9-1-1, Colony, Criminal Minds, Deadwood, The Sopranos, and JAG.

While the Boy Meets World cast's many Tiger Beat subjects in the making would slowly surpass him in visibility, William Daniels was easily the most recognizable member of the Boy Meets World cast upon its debut in 1993. The man now known to a generation of Americans as Mr. Feeny won two Emmy Awards (out of five total nominations) for his role as Dr. Mark Craig on the acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere. He also happens to be a Broadway legend for his work in 1776 and A Little Night Music, and — perhaps coolest of all — Daniels voiced K.I.T.T., the talking car on Knight Rider.

As such, Daniels was well into his seventies when Boy Meets World signed off in 2000, which is to say that he's eased up on his acting workload a bit. Daniels takes a lot of gigs that pay homage to his previous, famous roles. He's done the K.I.T.T. voice in a Lego video game and in the film The Benchwarmers, along with two episodes of The Simpsons. He played a doctor again, too, on Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy. And, of course, as an important influence on the Matthews family, Daniels had to return to play Mr. Feeny a few more times on Girl Meets World.

Maitland Ward joined Boy Meets World in season six as Rachel McGuire, Eric Matthews' and Jack Hunter's attractive roommate. Of all the young adult actors who cut their teeth on Boy Meets World, most went on to pursue similarly family-friendly work. Ward went in a different direction, and probably the most different direction imaginable. After acting gigs didn't come her way in the 2000s, Ward turned to the world of cosplay (via toofab), and appeared at fan, comic, and sci-fi conventions dressed in provocative outfits inspired by TV shows and movies. Then she ditched the clothing entirely. In 2013, she started posting nude and nearly-nude pictures of herself on Snapchat (per MEL Magazine), and a few years later signed with a talent agency for adult performers.

When Ward was apparently looking to get back into acting — of a sort — in 2019, she appeared in Drive, her first "feature." What convinced her to take the dive into adult films? A really good script. "They asked me to be a part of this, and I thought, 'I never knew there was anything in adults or porn or whatever that was this well done,'" Ward told inTouch. "This has so many themes in this and just my character is so different than anything I have portrayed before." Well, that's certainly true.