Speaker 1: Welcome to the very first ever Pod Meets World. I
Speaker 1: am Daniel fishal Aka to Pango Lawrence and then eventually
Speaker 1: to Pango Lawrence Matthews. H and I am joined this
Speaker 1: week and all the time by jump in this is
Speaker 1: right or Strong? I played Sean Patrick Hunter. Is it
Speaker 1: was my middle name? Patrick? Did that's just come to
Speaker 1: you out of nowhere? Yeah? Well, because you threw in
Speaker 1: your full name. I didn't realize. Did to Panga actually
Speaker 1: change her name to Matthews? That officially I think she
Speaker 1: was to Pango Lawrence Matthews. Interesting, I think I think
Speaker 1: my middle name ended up being Patrick. And I definitely
Speaker 1: remember when they introduced the last name Hunter. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, six episodes in. I was like, oh cool,
Speaker 1: I gotta cool. I got a cool last name now
Speaker 1: I just had Okay, sorry, I had a memory that
Speaker 1: came to me because of what you said. But we're
Speaker 1: getting ahead of ourselves. This is just the way it's
Speaker 1: gonna go. Guys, Oh is it my turn? I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: And I am will Fredell. I played Eric Neil Matthews.
Speaker 1: I want to say and uh, And then at some
Speaker 1: point he just starts calling himself Kyle. So there was
Speaker 1: that too. Yeah, Eric. Eric's name changed with the with
Speaker 1: the times, but yes, it is the three of us together,
Speaker 1: and I think it was it was Neil at one point.
Speaker 1: I think again they threw in names for us. Eventually
Speaker 1: we go like, oh that's our name. Now. Well, the
Speaker 1: continuity in the nineties was physically non existing. No, not great.
Speaker 1: We we will definitely touch on that in this podcast.
Speaker 1: Um which this is a perfect time to tell you
Speaker 1: exactly what this podcast is. UM So a little history.
Speaker 1: I guess writer Will and I are very close friends.
Speaker 1: Um Will actually live so close to me I could
Speaker 1: run to his house and be on his zoom in
Speaker 1: about five minutes. If that seriously, I mean, if I
Speaker 1: really ran, I could be there in thirty five seconds.
Speaker 1: But um and so we all have varying histories, I
Speaker 1: guess you would say with boy Meat's World and whether
Speaker 1: or not any of us have seen them. I know
Speaker 1: for myself I probably saw almost all, if not all,
Speaker 1: of the episodes when they aired in the nineties. Because
Speaker 1: I was twelve years old. It was my first big
Speaker 1: major role. I was super excited to watch the show
Speaker 1: that we had filmed probably four or five months before,
Speaker 1: sitting around Friday Night with my family. We watched the
Speaker 1: whole t G I F block, like a lot of
Speaker 1: families did so eventually, once I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I probably wasn't like on Friday Night necessarily always watching them.
Speaker 1: But I think I've seen almost all of them at
Speaker 1: least once, but it would have been back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and then since the nineties, I have only seen a
Speaker 1: handful of episodes a handful of times since then. Um,
Speaker 1: I have very few memories of what the episodes are about.
Speaker 1: I actually think I have very few memories of even
Speaker 1: filming the episodes. Um. And so I'm really excited too
Speaker 1: kind of rewatch, but also watch for the first time,
Speaker 1: certainly the first time with like adult eyes, um, and
Speaker 1: to see what it's like, both the cringe and the not. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what about you writer? Um, So I'm pretty extreme
Speaker 1: and that I think I've only seen maybe four or
Speaker 1: five episodes of Boy Beats World. Um. Um. Ever, well,
Speaker 1: I do think I watched most of the first season,
Speaker 1: like you, Danielle, with my family as like a thing,
Speaker 1: But there was an episode pretty early on, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was within the first season, but
Speaker 1: I remember watching it with my family and being so
Speaker 1: self conscious and just hating the way I looked, and
Speaker 1: you know, all the like insecurities creeping in and realizing
Speaker 1: there was nothing I could do about it, and just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm never gonna watch this show again. And
Speaker 1: then I didn't. Um, I remember, you know, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys remember, but I so. I.
Speaker 1: I grew up in northern California and I would fly
Speaker 1: home every weekend, every Friday when we were watching the show.
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening is I would fly from
Speaker 1: the Bourbank Airport to Oakland Airport and it was like,
Speaker 1: without fail, Boy Meets World will be playing in the
Speaker 1: Burbank Airport while I was waiting for my flight, and
Speaker 1: I can remember again being so insecure and hiding my face.
Speaker 1: So I basically ran away from boy Meat's World all
Speaker 1: my life. Um as right as it were, And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: so for me, this is really gonna be interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, my relationship to the show has changed drastically
Speaker 1: over the years. I now have a kid, um, and
Speaker 1: I am going to watch this show with my son
Speaker 1: because he is now he's seven, and he has reached
Speaker 1: the age where I think it's appropriate to watch Boy
Speaker 1: Meat's World. Um, certainly the first season and um, and
Speaker 1: he's like he likes sitcoms now, so yes, so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to see it through his eyes. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to remember. I actually have a lot of
Speaker 1: memories of filming. Um, this was a huge part of
Speaker 1: my life. I UM, so I have. I have a
Speaker 1: ton of memories to share behind the scenes, especially the
Speaker 1: early years. I don't know why. I guess when you're younger,
Speaker 1: you know, these experiences just sort of lock in place. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but mostly for me, this is about UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I spent a lot of my
Speaker 1: twenties avoiding Boy Meets World. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: I went to college in New York right after we
Speaker 1: finished the show, and I just wanted to be a student.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an academic. I now write and direct.
Speaker 1: I moved away from acting completely, and so a lot
Speaker 1: it just feels like a lot of my life has
Speaker 1: been distancing myself from this huge part of my life that,
Speaker 1: of course of the human population associates me with. UM
Speaker 1: and you know, and then with Girl Meets World, there
Speaker 1: was you know, going back to direct that show and
Speaker 1: like that changed how I felt about so just I'm
Speaker 1: in an interesting place. I think I'm going to really
Speaker 1: like the show now. Like I think this is a
Speaker 1: chance for me to appreciate it the way uh I
Speaker 1: probably should have at the time, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: because of my own issues, I did not. Um, so
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to like feel good about this part
Speaker 1: of my life because personally it's always felt great. My
Speaker 1: relationship with you guys has always been so positive. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like we have so many shared positive memories
Speaker 1: and um, I learned so much. But certainly in terms
Speaker 1: of the cultural like what Boy Meets World is. I
Speaker 1: didn't watch TV growing up, so like I didn't really
Speaker 1: understand even what we were doing at the time. So
Speaker 1: this will be interesting. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a lot
Speaker 1: to unpack in the first episode. Oh yeah, well we
Speaker 1: got a uh yeah. My my relationship with the show
Speaker 1: I think was different was well, it was definitely different
Speaker 1: than that. Was also different because we were, Um you know,
Speaker 1: as you get older, four years in a seems like nothing,
Speaker 1: but sixteen in year twelve and you're both twelve, there's
Speaker 1: the four years is a big difference. So I had
Speaker 1: a much different experience on Boy Me tw World than
Speaker 1: than really any of you. Did you know, I only
Speaker 1: had to go to school the first year and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't in the classroom the whole time.
Speaker 1: But I have seen them all. I haven't seen them
Speaker 1: since they were on. I watched them when they first
Speaker 1: came out. I was never a PARTI er kind of
Speaker 1: Everyone was like, oh, l a kids, and you're at clubs.
Speaker 1: I still have never been to a club in my
Speaker 1: entire life, you know, So Friday night I was home essentially,
Speaker 1: and I would watch Boy Me Tworld. I I did.
Speaker 1: It's as as horrible as that sounds, um, but I
Speaker 1: haven't seen them since except for you know we've done.
Speaker 1: That was a positive experience for you, like watching it? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. You know. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: where it was a culmination of a lot of work
Speaker 1: and it was all I ever wanted to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were like, yeah, I love a TV actor, And
Speaker 1: that's all I ever wanted to be was on a sitcom.
Speaker 1: I know. I always tell people I never wanted to
Speaker 1: be Michael J. Box on Back to the Future. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. That's
Speaker 1: all I ever wanted. So I loved what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I loved every day of it. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go home. I didn't want to go to sleep. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be on the set. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in front of the audience. I wanted to find
Speaker 1: jokes that weren't there that was like my joy. So
Speaker 1: I loved every second of it. I mean, again, looking
Speaker 1: back at it, you you look back with the eyes
Speaker 1: and adult and you say, well, wow, there's a lot
Speaker 1: I want to kind of as we said, unpack um.
Speaker 1: But it was it was as for the product itself,
Speaker 1: as least as I remember it, you know, seeing it
Speaker 1: at twenty four, the last time I saw it. And
Speaker 1: then of course we've done things like we always talked
Speaker 1: about the Scream episode, which we'll get too. So I've
Speaker 1: seen that ten times because I've had to you know, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna watch that with an audience, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: watch that and then do a panel. So it's I've
Speaker 1: seen that. I've seen the plays with Girls episode because
Speaker 1: when I came back on Girl Meat World, I had
Speaker 1: to make sure I remembered what that character is like.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I haven't but as you both know,
Speaker 1: I have kind of a creepy memory, So whenever the
Speaker 1: show is on in front of me, I'm right back
Speaker 1: where it was. I remember the next line coming, I
Speaker 1: remember what I felt as I was doing it. I
Speaker 1: remember what happened backstage, like I remember it all when
Speaker 1: it's back in front of me. Meanwhile, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: were we doing? There was a whole episode about like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many weird episodes that I look at them
Speaker 1: like that's me. I see me talking, but I have
Speaker 1: absolutely zero memory of being in that scene. It's crazy,
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's more of an empathetic thing for me
Speaker 1: where I I get the I remember how I felt
Speaker 1: when I was doing it, and I instantly feel the
Speaker 1: same way. So it's it's either I'm very anxious, you know,
Speaker 1: like we'll get into talking about how we're going to
Speaker 1: watch the first episode, but I watched it first episode
Speaker 1: and even pressing play, I was anxious. And I knew
Speaker 1: I was going to be anxious because not only am
Speaker 1: I an anxious person, but going back into the world,
Speaker 1: and also because I was so anxious when we did
Speaker 1: the pilot. I was so anxious when we did the
Speaker 1: first episode, so I instantly kind of channeled that feeling again.
Speaker 1: It's very odd to go back, but um, I think
Speaker 1: it's about time that we do, frankly, because we're coming
Speaker 1: at it from three different places. Yeah, I hope I
Speaker 1: have a similar experience to Will, and I wish I
Speaker 1: had more of a similar memory experience like writer, I don't.
Speaker 1: I loved every second of doing the show when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. I loved it, um certainly when we
Speaker 1: first started season one, season two, season three. By the
Speaker 1: time we got to the seventh season, sixth season, even
Speaker 1: I was starting to be like but like the beginning
Speaker 1: of it, I loved every second of it, and all
Speaker 1: I cared about was but I got to do more,
Speaker 1: and I felt the same way Will did, Like I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be on set. It was hard for
Speaker 1: me to sleep. I'd get excited, but you know, before
Speaker 1: the next day of work. And yet, as it's probably
Speaker 1: something I should unpack in therapy or something, I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of memories like I have very like
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I don't. There was no
Speaker 1: like trauma in my childhood that I'm aware of. I
Speaker 1: just I had a really like positive life experience, and
Speaker 1: I loved being on the show, and yet memories for
Speaker 1: me over all stages of my life are very few
Speaker 1: and far between, and I don't really know why. So
Speaker 1: I have a theory about that. I have So my
Speaker 1: theory about that is essentially, no matter what you're doing,
Speaker 1: how extraordinary it is, if you do it every day,
Speaker 1: it just becomes your day to day life. So going
Speaker 1: and asking, you know, somebody who wasn't on a television show,
Speaker 1: talk to me about what it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: certain weeks during the sixth grade, you're also not going
Speaker 1: to have those same kind of memories. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just well, that's the thing. Our weekly schedule was the same, right, right,
Speaker 1: and we should talk about that. I feel like we
Speaker 1: should explain what it was like to actually be on
Speaker 1: the show because because, yeah, it becomes regular even though
Speaker 1: each episode is different. There obviously, you know, we're playing
Speaker 1: the same character, We're in the same sets for the
Speaker 1: most part, and then behind the scenes, we're following the
Speaker 1: same schedule every week. We go to school for certain hours,
Speaker 1: we rehearsed for certain hours, we have the live show
Speaker 1: on Thursday night where the audience comes in. We're wearing
Speaker 1: a lot of the same wardrobe. So in a weird way,
Speaker 1: it lends itself to amnesia, right, it becomes repetitive and
Speaker 1: you start taking it for granted. Um, But unlike you, Daniel,
Speaker 1: I was I didn't want to be there from the gig.
Speaker 1: I remember. I have this very distinct memory of of
Speaker 1: when we got picked up for the back nine and
Speaker 1: calling my girlfriend at the time, Bag in Northern Caliber
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen years old, just so love sick as,
Speaker 1: which we will certainly talk about because I always was
Speaker 1: love sick and I just remember telling her like I
Speaker 1: signed a seven year contract I will be twenty years old,
Speaker 1: that this show keeps going, and thinking that was just death,
Speaker 1: like that was going to be the worst thing. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine if this possibly kept going until I was
Speaker 1: twenty because I just did, you know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be home. I wanted to be like with me and
Speaker 1: and yeah, and then that's exactly what happened. So question,
Speaker 1: why were you on the show? Why were you an
Speaker 1: actor who didn't want the job? What was the motivating
Speaker 1: factor then to become an actor? Great question. No, I
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to be an actor. Boy Meat's world was
Speaker 1: like my job up, do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: I was already It's so crazy to think about, but
Speaker 1: at thirteen, I was all pretty cynical. I had already done.
Speaker 1: I had already done the TV series that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, which was a TV series where I got
Speaker 1: to play Julie Andrew's son, and I, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a much bigger part. It was so much fun.
Speaker 1: It was my first sitcom. We did seven episodes. Blake
Speaker 1: Edwards was directing, a legendary director. It was like and
Speaker 1: and we had all the attention, you know, Julie Andrews,
Speaker 1: the sound of music, Mary Poppins. I was playing her son.
Speaker 1: I loved it so much. And we had done that
Speaker 1: for two years before Boy Meets World, and it only
Speaker 1: filmed seven episodes and they dumped it. The show just
Speaker 1: got dumped on the summer program on Saturday nights. And
Speaker 1: so by the time Boy Meets World came around, it
Speaker 1: was like I had agents and managers and everybody saying,
Speaker 1: this is good, you should just get on another pilot,
Speaker 1: just do another pilot this year. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: do movies. I wanted to do plays. I you know,
Speaker 1: I started with Lama's Rob like I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I just thought, like, and here was boy
Speaker 1: Meets World, which at the time, if you guys remember
Speaker 1: it is called the untitled Ben Savage Project. It was
Speaker 1: being built around Ben, and so my part was tiny.
Speaker 1: I think in the original pilot script only had two lines.
Speaker 1: And so I, you know, I I wanted to act,
Speaker 1: but for me, Boy Me Toord was just like one
Speaker 1: of the many jobs I was doing or that I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, And so the fact that it became
Speaker 1: this hit surprised me and sort of threw me for
Speaker 1: a loop. And like I said, I didn't watch television,
Speaker 1: so I didn't even really understand like what we were doing,
Speaker 1: like what a sitcom was versus um a soap opera
Speaker 1: versus a movie. You know, I I liked movies, but
Speaker 1: when it came to television, I didn't understand like the form.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't watch that form format growing up.
Speaker 1: So I always, you know, I just was kind of
Speaker 1: like lost and kind of felt I felt like an outsider.
Speaker 1: Frankly um and I felt like an outsider in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I never felt super comfortable like around other actors. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until our set that I really became friends
Speaker 1: with other child actors. You know, I think there's a
Speaker 1: protective thing. You know, every every child actor has a
Speaker 1: parent behind them, at least one who's helping them, you know,
Speaker 1: manage and navigate their career. And yeah, I mean that's true.
Speaker 1: You were older and you used to just take a
Speaker 1: bus into New York City right by myself. My parents
Speaker 1: are lawyers, my dad was. We got a lot to
Speaker 1: impact that. But yeah, but I mean I guess like
Speaker 1: for me, there was always this fear sort of you know,
Speaker 1: bread into me by my parents of like and my
Speaker 1: parents were always afraid of being a stage parent, right
Speaker 1: and then being a brady child actor like those There
Speaker 1: was this fear. It's like this this lingering thing that
Speaker 1: constantly hangs over you as a child actor, Like you
Speaker 1: don't want to be like them and they're like these
Speaker 1: monsters who only care about like, you know, getting the
Speaker 1: job and fame, and like that was like this bread
Speaker 1: into me by that by the time I did bore
Speaker 1: me to world that like it was a protective show
Speaker 1: that my parents had sort of put around me, like
Speaker 1: make sure you have a nor more childhood and make
Speaker 1: sure you stay in school and focus on you know
Speaker 1: the important things in life, and don't get too caught
Speaker 1: up like acting is great, the art is great, but
Speaker 1: don't get too caught up in you know, the craziness.
Speaker 1: And there was craziness, you know. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: we did pretty well, Like at a lot of the
Speaker 1: nineties kid actors turned out way better. But if you
Speaker 1: think about the eighties, like there was this sort of
Speaker 1: reputation of like you're going to hold up a liquor
Speaker 1: store one day if you don't keep working right, or
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna become a drug addict, or like
Speaker 1: being a child actor was fraught. It was constantly fraught
Speaker 1: with this danger like you're gonna fall off a cliff
Speaker 1: if you're not careful, and your whole life could be ruined.
Speaker 1: And we all felt that, right, I mean like there
Speaker 1: was an awareness of that, and I think I just
Speaker 1: internalized it. So let's let's actually talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what our Boy Meets World schedule was, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't It was a little bit of a unique schedule
Speaker 1: because Michael Jacobs um celebrates the Sabbath on Friday evenings
Speaker 1: and so which is when most most shows shoot. Most
Speaker 1: show shoots, like most shows have a Monday through Friday schedule,
Speaker 1: which is what I think people think of when they
Speaker 1: think of starting a work week. You go to work
Speaker 1: on Monday, you enterer week on Friday, and you have
Speaker 1: the weekend. UM Michael wanted to have our live studio
Speaker 1: audience tapings on Thursday nights, which meant our first day
Speaker 1: of rehearsal was Friday morning. And every show, every sitcom show,
Speaker 1: starts off UM their week with a table read. So
Speaker 1: Friday morning we would show up to a room like
Speaker 1: a conference room and there were lots of chairs set
Speaker 1: up and the ABC and Disney executives would be sitting
Speaker 1: in those seats, along with our parents or whoever else
Speaker 1: was there, our studio teachers, UM, and the some of
Speaker 1: the crew. And then we had a long conference table
Speaker 1: set up with name tags for all the actors and
Speaker 1: that there were two tables. They were set up like
Speaker 1: a t so a really long one for all the actors.
Speaker 1: And then at the top of the tea was where
Speaker 1: the writers, producers Michael Jacobs where and the director where
Speaker 1: they sit and then we just read the script. Did
Speaker 1: you guys prep before a table read or did you
Speaker 1: like to go in cold um. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things we we have to
Speaker 1: say is we eventually got a room. If if memory serves,
Speaker 1: when we started, we were in trailers. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that at at the Disney lot, we were in like
Speaker 1: this big trailer. I don't remember that at all. So
Speaker 1: this big trailer is where we had our for I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember. So my parents to live in the same
Speaker 1: house back in Connecticut where I grew up. I was
Speaker 1: home not too long ago, and I was cleaning out
Speaker 1: my desk and I came upon I kept a diary
Speaker 1: for like the first three months. I did boy, because
Speaker 1: of course I was going to write in it every day.
Speaker 1: And it lasted about three months. And the first entry
Speaker 1: was the first table read and I literally I read
Speaker 1: it was the two page thing. And I was talking
Speaker 1: about how we walked into the trailer. I you know,
Speaker 1: we met this diary right now, But I remember the
Speaker 1: thing I remember most about it. So we would I
Speaker 1: would prep as much as I could, having any idea
Speaker 1: what I was doing, because we didn't get the scripts
Speaker 1: the night until the night until the night before. We
Speaker 1: get the scripts and we get them delivered because of
Speaker 1: course nothing was emailed so envelope. But drive to our
Speaker 1: house and drop a script off on the porch, and
Speaker 1: we will get into more about why that is awful
Speaker 1: for the production assistant when they're rewriting till four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. But we get there and I had
Speaker 1: never done a table read. I did not know we
Speaker 1: were starting with a table read. I did not know
Speaker 1: what it was. And they we I walked in with
Speaker 1: the script. They sat me down at the table. My
Speaker 1: mom was there. I'll never forget that. And my hands
Speaker 1: and feet were shaking so much that I kept everything
Speaker 1: tucked under the table. So for the first table read,
Speaker 1: it's just like my head was sticking above the table
Speaker 1: as everything was shaking, and so I prepped as much
Speaker 1: as I could. But I didn't know anybody. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing. We will get into watching
Speaker 1: first episode. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing
Speaker 1: until several episodes into the series. Um, but it was
Speaker 1: it was really scary. And then you read it like
Speaker 1: a straight play. You read it straight through, like from
Speaker 1: beginning to end. Somebody's reading the stage directions to Pango,
Speaker 1: walks in to Chubbies and sits down with Corey, Hey, Corey,
Speaker 1: how's everything going? So, I mean, you read it straight through,
Speaker 1: and this is really a process to test jokes fundamentally,
Speaker 1: you know, and to see if the episode is working,
Speaker 1: because what the writers are doing is they're listening and
Speaker 1: they're taking notes and if people don't laugh, that's that's gone.
Speaker 1: And there were things where the actor was gone too
Speaker 1: after a table read. You It didn't happen all of them,
Speaker 1: but there were times where it was like they were
Speaker 1: not just testing us but also the actor and it
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I can't wait to work with you. Jimmy,
Speaker 1: where's Jimmy. Jimmy's gone. Jimmy had two jokes and somehow
Speaker 1: missed three of them, so he's gone. It's really it's
Speaker 1: a constantly evolved like throughout the week, the script is
Speaker 1: being rewritten multiple times a day. We you know, after
Speaker 1: the table read, we then go into the rehearsal period,
Speaker 1: which based last the next three days where we're rehearsing
Speaker 1: on our feet with their scripts in hand, and the
Speaker 1: you know, the scripts are constantly changing, so you can't
Speaker 1: memorize anything. You know, some of us would, but as
Speaker 1: we got better, I feel like we did start memorizing
Speaker 1: it almost immediately, like your brain clicked into this zone.
Speaker 1: But for the most part we'd be on stage and
Speaker 1: and and it would just be the actors, the director,
Speaker 1: a script supervisor. Who else would be there, like maybe props,
Speaker 1: the teacher, A very small group of us would be
Speaker 1: going through the scenes and putting it on its feet.
Speaker 1: And we would do that the first day, get new
Speaker 1: scripts that night. It was a very light rehearsal because
Speaker 1: Mike Will said there was almost always a full script
Speaker 1: rewrite immediately after table read, and so they were rewriting
Speaker 1: on Friday, which lets the director and the actors know,
Speaker 1: don't memorize too much of this, don't put it on
Speaker 1: its feet too much, because whole things may change. Sets
Speaker 1: may you may not be no longer in the classroom,
Speaker 1: You're going to be in the living room, like a
Speaker 1: lot of things can change. So you do like a
Speaker 1: really fast light rehearsal on Friday, and then you come
Speaker 1: in ready to go on Monday for a full Monday
Speaker 1: rehearsal and then run through that night for the producers
Speaker 1: and writers. The network run through is not until the
Speaker 1: next day. Now I didn't even know what to run through.
Speaker 1: Was nobody. Nobody prepared me for any of this. So
Speaker 1: when they're like, hey, are you ready for the run through?
Speaker 1: I had no idea what that meant. So what is
Speaker 1: a run through? Will explain that. So a run through
Speaker 1: is you do the entire show from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: You're holding the scripts because you don't you haven't memorized
Speaker 1: the lines by this point. Costumes, nomes, no props, no cameras.
Speaker 1: You're just running it through like a play, from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. There's a bank of director's chairs set up
Speaker 1: in front of whatever. You know, say you're in the
Speaker 1: classroom scene, there's a bank of director's chairs. All the
Speaker 1: producers and directors sit there, which is basically where the
Speaker 1: fourth wall should be, because everything camera, where the cameras
Speaker 1: would be, there's just a bank of chairs. And then
Speaker 1: we run, we go through it, and we'd blinds and
Speaker 1: we'd miss jokes and we you know, then you literally
Speaker 1: you would get up and walk to the next area
Speaker 1: where there be more chairs set up, and you'd continue
Speaker 1: the show and you'd run it from beginning to end. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I did not know that was happening. And then
Speaker 1: I also did not know that was followed, especially on
Speaker 1: a Michael Jacobs set, by the note session, the notes.
Speaker 1: Someone talk about the note session please, because I'm getting
Speaker 1: adjective just thinking. So typically after a run through the
Speaker 1: everybody gathers in one of the sets. Everyone sits down,
Speaker 1: all the actors and one side, and all the writers
Speaker 1: on the other side, and the executive producer and or
Speaker 1: the director, but mostly the executive producer gives feedback on
Speaker 1: what just happened on the run through. And this feedback session,
Speaker 1: I think on most shows probably is like twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: which is like, hey, this joke didn't work, and they
Speaker 1: give notes to the actors if they have any like hey,
Speaker 1: could you try it this way? Try it that way.
Speaker 1: With Michael Jacobs, who was the creator of Boymate's World, um,
Speaker 1: he's kind of he was really into the notes sessions.
Speaker 1: We would have one to two hour long notes sessions
Speaker 1: and he would open up a script and say, all right,
Speaker 1: page one line one, page one line one, page one
Speaker 1: line one and uh the memory I can hear his
Speaker 1: pages turning, snap snap snap. Yeah. Michael took notes sessions
Speaker 1: to a performance art. It was really just about him
Speaker 1: giving you know. He would he would most often talk
Speaker 1: to the actors. He wouldn't talk so much about the
Speaker 1: script at that stage. As the show went on, it
Speaker 1: became more of an open process, I feel like where
Speaker 1: he would admit, like, oh, we gotta fix this whole
Speaker 1: scene or this whole thing. But for the most part
Speaker 1: it was a chance for him to try and explain
Speaker 1: to us, like what they were aiming for and where
Speaker 1: we missed the markets actors or what was going wrong, um,
Speaker 1: And and then they would go off after the two
Speaker 1: hour notes session. The writers would then end up writing
Speaker 1: all night, like you know, on our show as opposed
Speaker 1: to other shows, I think they would go into like
Speaker 1: two in the morning that night rewriting, and then we'd
Speaker 1: get a new script the next morning with some changes, um,
Speaker 1: and then do it all over again this time and
Speaker 1: the core p a farrier person would drop off the
Speaker 1: scripts at whatever time they finished writing them, so that
Speaker 1: we had them for the drive to work the next morning.
Speaker 1: We didn't have to wait till we have to say
Speaker 1: so much paper. But also like like a four am
Speaker 1: do covered script would just be on the porch sometimes
Speaker 1: because the sprinklers had gone on in the morning or
Speaker 1: whatever and it had just been delivered and there are
Speaker 1: eleven cast members that lived all over Los Angeles. It's
Speaker 1: not like Danielle and I right now where we live
Speaker 1: thirty seconds from each other. It was somebody driving all
Speaker 1: over l A. And apparently they were you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just for us. It was the thing that we
Speaker 1: didn't realize is that every change they make effects wardrobe,
Speaker 1: every change they make effects set to, every depiction head
Speaker 1: gets a script. Everybody got a script. So they were
Speaker 1: delivering arguably fifty seventy five scripts a night. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: all over Los Angeles at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: These poor p a s for no money and I
Speaker 1: mean just to be part of the industry, and they're
Speaker 1: the unsung heroes of the show. But it was, it
Speaker 1: was the whole experience was was insane. And then and
Speaker 1: then we get to so that was Monday, and that
Speaker 1: was studio run. That was we should also insert. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: for those of us children who were in school, we
Speaker 1: have to do by California state law, three hours of
Speaker 1: school a day. So what sounds like nothing, no, but
Speaker 1: it's actually a lot when you're one on one with
Speaker 1: a teacher. In our case, we had we had two teachers.
Speaker 1: Ultimately the show, and we first started we only had one,
Speaker 1: but ultimately we ended up having two teachers who they
Speaker 1: are basically our personal tutors because all of us are
Speaker 1: in different grades. Ben and I was one grade older
Speaker 1: than Ben, and Danielle you were even a grade younger
Speaker 1: than Ben. I think when you were in high school.
Speaker 1: I was a senior and enior high so we so
Speaker 1: you had two teachers having to navigate completely different subject
Speaker 1: matters um and we would get all of our work
Speaker 1: from our school ahead of time, and so we'd be
Speaker 1: showing up with our own textbooks, our own subjects, our
Speaker 1: own set of requirements, and these teachers would spend you know,
Speaker 1: three to four hours a day with us being like
Speaker 1: all right, right, or you're working on your English paper
Speaker 1: right now, go ahead, that's what you're doing for the
Speaker 1: next twenty minutes. Then you have Latin, and then they'd
Speaker 1: be doing Latin declensions with Ben and like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just our classroom became, you know, this whole other
Speaker 1: level of work that we were doing. So even when
Speaker 1: you know, normally on a show you would get a
Speaker 1: break and be able to sit in your dressing your room,
Speaker 1: and I don't know the break is usually then when
Speaker 1: you're not in the scene, so the scene now doesn't
Speaker 1: involve Sean or doesn't involve air, if it doesn't involve
Speaker 1: to Pega, you would normally then go get a break.
Speaker 1: And for us, that's where we would go, get to bank,
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty minutes of school, go do twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of school. It wasn't ever three hours of
Speaker 1: school consecutively. It was twenty minutes here, forty minutes there,
Speaker 1: possibly an hour if you were so lucky. Um, and
Speaker 1: so we'd run back to our classroom and uh school
Speaker 1: as we can pass the spic craft craft service tables
Speaker 1: have good How many Twizzlers are there? Yea? There so much,
Speaker 1: so much food and nothing to get. But so much
Speaker 1: of our social life did revolve around the school classroom,
Speaker 1: you know, which is interesting because I think people always
Speaker 1: imagine us on set hanging out, which we did, but
Speaker 1: when we were on set, we were often working on
Speaker 1: the scene. Are real, downtime are real like getting to
Speaker 1: know each other, hanging out, getting to know each other's parents,
Speaker 1: who were always there. By the way, we always had
Speaker 1: to have our parents, so you you have to imagine
Speaker 1: that there's a you know, for every kid, there's a parent.
Speaker 1: Also on set, there's a studio, there's a studio teacher
Speaker 1: or two, and we would be hanging out. We would
Speaker 1: have the craft service table, which is the table that
Speaker 1: has all the snacks and coffee and tea, and then
Speaker 1: there'd be our classroom, which was a trailer the first season.
Speaker 1: It was just a trailer, had a couch and tables
Speaker 1: and like you know, we our studio teachers would put
Speaker 1: little posters on the wall and try and make it
Speaker 1: look like a classroom. But it never really felt like
Speaker 1: a classroom because I wasn't a cat with the hang
Speaker 1: in there baby, you know, like okay, but that's where
Speaker 1: our social life like really like that's where we really
Speaker 1: got to know each other, right, is like running around
Speaker 1: backstage um, and you know, and the stage itself is
Speaker 1: these huge sound stages like just these big warehouse um.
Speaker 1: And we were on the Disney lot the first year,
Speaker 1: which is which was the biggest stage by the way,
Speaker 1: in their film stage which is which is stage two,
Speaker 1: which is was not broken in half. Most of the
Speaker 1: stages were broken in half and in behalf the sides.
Speaker 1: We were in this cavernous, ridiculous stage where it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we've got to build a giant pirate ship building on
Speaker 1: stage two. So that home improvement store. Ye. And then
Speaker 1: was thunder ali going that first season, Yes, thunder Alley
Speaker 1: with Andrew Keegan and who else was on that ed
Speaker 1: um uh he passed not to ed Asner. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So there was So there was this weird
Speaker 1: little community too of like our outside of our stage,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a wreck room that they
Speaker 1: had set up for all the kids of Disney. Do
Speaker 1: you remember this we where we did him. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we had pe which basically meant we'd go and
Speaker 1: play ping pong or football football. We did play football
Speaker 1: on asphalt by the way, which with the home improvement
Speaker 1: kids all the time, it was it was like oh wait, okay,
Speaker 1: so Jonathan Taylor Thomas is on Leon Nora, so that's
Speaker 1: not a good matchup right, I'm going to hit you
Speaker 1: in the corner. They're trying not to, you know, run
Speaker 1: into the rusty nails on the side of that thing. Wait.
Speaker 1: And then Haley Joel Osmond was on thunder Alley too, right,
Speaker 1: kid though, like he was Yeah, but it was I
Speaker 1: remember you. They brought in Nintendo six was it wasn't
Speaker 1: even sixty four at the time. It was Nintendo whenever.
Speaker 1: The second one was Superintendo, Super Nintendo. And you were
Speaker 1: a street Fighter from your Master street Fighter two street
Speaker 1: Fighter to Master and every time oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. He became a joke. It was just
Speaker 1: you know what it was. It was wreck. It was
Speaker 1: like R and R, you know, like to let us
Speaker 1: out in the yard. We could do whatever we want
Speaker 1: a cigarettes and we did, but it was you try
Speaker 1: to play writer in in Street Fighter. And one could
Speaker 1: be the most frustrating thing ever still to this day,
Speaker 1: and that was Jim. That was just then go hey,
Speaker 1: I got my exercise in. Then I'd go and smoke
Speaker 1: a cigarette and go back to work. What are you
Speaker 1: smoking at the time, Yes, was smoking king sixteen year old,
Speaker 1: like kidding. By sixteen, I'd already been smoking first. And
Speaker 1: the most fun thing about that is that like none
Speaker 1: of the grown ups like stopped you or like they
Speaker 1: were like, okay, you know it, because now they down
Speaker 1: are you kidding? I? I had just celebrated that, and
Speaker 1: I'm telling I would need to tell everybody this. On
Speaker 1: the seven of May, I celebrated my eighth year without
Speaker 1: a cigarette. Please quit smoking. It's very horrible for you.
Speaker 1: But by the time I knew it was bad for me,
Speaker 1: I was hooked. So I mean I was. I was
Speaker 1: smoking heavily by fourteen, and I'd already probably started smoking
Speaker 1: at eleven. I was going to New York, I was
Speaker 1: already on television. I was, you know, it was the
Speaker 1: thing to do, and then you start doing it because
Speaker 1: it's cool, and then you're addicted to it. And where
Speaker 1: would you smoke at Disney? I remember you smoking it
Speaker 1: wrap side right outside the stage. I don't remember that area,
Speaker 1: Like I guess. I just didn't hide anything, like my
Speaker 1: pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket. And Bill Daniels
Speaker 1: every day would walk up to me and he tapped
Speaker 1: the pack of cigarettes and ego right next to your
Speaker 1: heart and walk away and just he would do that,
Speaker 1: or he would do that every day, every single day,
Speaker 1: right next to your heart. And it's like one of
Speaker 1: those things where you're like, come on, I'm sixteen, I
Speaker 1: know the world. I know everything, And you look back
Speaker 1: now and it's like, man, if you just listened, you know,
Speaker 1: of course that is the hashtag to yours. So if
Speaker 1: you're you're young and you're smoking or you're thinking thinking
Speaker 1: to smoke, so it's just not worth it. It really
Speaker 1: is not worth it. So yeah, I mean I was
Speaker 1: already I had a much different Like you talk about
Speaker 1: parents on the setting all stuff, I am from a
Speaker 1: very close knit family. It sounds like I'm not, but
Speaker 1: I'm from a very very close knit family. My parents
Speaker 1: just celebrated their fifty wedding anniversary fifty ninth wedding anniversary.
Speaker 1: Were all super close. But my parents are were two
Speaker 1: lawyers in Connecticut. My dad is still a practicing lawyer's
Speaker 1: eighty three years old. My mom ran all three of
Speaker 1: the courts in Connecticut. My dad was also a captain
Speaker 1: the Navy. They're like, if you want to go do
Speaker 1: this you we're not going to stand in your way,
Speaker 1: but we can't give up our lives to come with you.
Speaker 1: So they used to pick me up at school, drop
Speaker 1: me off at the bus in Farming Tea in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I'd take a three hour bus ride down in New York,
Speaker 1: where my manager would pick me up most of the time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he didn't. I was ten or eleven, I'd walk
Speaker 1: the streets in New York go to my audition, grab
Speaker 1: a slice of pizza, come back and go and go
Speaker 1: home and buy eleven or twelve. I lived in the
Speaker 1: city because I was on a show, and then I
Speaker 1: got Boy, Met World, and that was it. My first
Speaker 1: guardian was my oldest brother's fraternity brother, Spencer, who is
Speaker 1: still a good friend of mine, lives right down the street.
Speaker 1: You live in the city with my oldest brother, my
Speaker 1: oldest brother at the time, with Gary. No no no no.
Speaker 1: I live with Gary, my older brother Gary. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was eleven years old, twelve years old doing don't
Speaker 1: just sit there. So I lived in New York with Gary,
Speaker 1: who is retired from Wall Street at forty five years old,
Speaker 1: but at the time to live with me. Took a
Speaker 1: job as a janitor and was a januitor in New
Speaker 1: York so we could have an apartment, and I was
Speaker 1: on a show at Nickelodeon. I was on Nickelodeon from
Speaker 1: like twelve to fifteen, and then I got Boy at
Speaker 1: sixteen and moved out to l A. But and you
Speaker 1: were that cool guy from New York, you know. They
Speaker 1: were always when your kids, when your kid after you
Speaker 1: always auditioned for stuff, and then it always comes down
Speaker 1: to the same three people. You know, it's like because
Speaker 1: because there's the pool was very limited back then, so
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, it's always me Elijah Wood
Speaker 1: and like, uh Ben. I first met Ben because Ben
Speaker 1: and I screen tested against each other for Newsies. Do
Speaker 1: you guys remember, of course, yeah, the musical news Hees.
Speaker 1: So it was down to Luke Edwards who ended up
Speaker 1: getting it. This kid named Ben Savage who I met
Speaker 1: that day, and then me Um and we all we
Speaker 1: had we had to sing, we had to dance and act,
Speaker 1: and back then they did screen tests on thirty five
Speaker 1: millimeter on the Disney lot, so we had a full
Speaker 1: film shoot. Anyway, that's a whole another shot. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: but so but then there was always whenever they would
Speaker 1: have these auditions, like there would always be that cool
Speaker 1: guy from New York. You'd get flown in from New
Speaker 1: York and they always got the part. You'd always be like, ah,
Speaker 1: we're just the other schmucks from l A. Will always
Speaker 1: see each other. But yeah, I remember, Yeah, your life
Speaker 1: must have been so different from ours as far as
Speaker 1: being a kid actor man, because in the woods in
Speaker 1: Connecticut and it was like, you know, I would I
Speaker 1: would go back to my regular life in Connecticut, which
Speaker 1: was the best. But then I, oh, I have an
Speaker 1: audition today, I have to go shoot a commercial today.
Speaker 1: The bus would pick me up. I would go down
Speaker 1: to the bus and I would do my job whatever
Speaker 1: I had to do, and then back home to Connecticut.
Speaker 1: You know. It was That's just that's how it was.
Speaker 1: So it was much different from me. The whole l
Speaker 1: A thing was very When I finally didn't move out
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles, I didn't like it. It was very weird.
Speaker 1: I was very disconnected from everybody. You guys were so
Speaker 1: much younger than I was, and I was right in
Speaker 1: the middle. So I was either too old or too
Speaker 1: young to really hang out with anybody. Um. Luckily I
Speaker 1: met Marsden right away, and and so Jason who played
Speaker 1: Jason mars who is still still one of my best
Speaker 1: friends in the world. And um, we had a small
Speaker 1: little group of friends. But they're like, hey, man, didn't
Speaker 1: you go a party and do my I would get
Speaker 1: back to to Connecticut, my friends like, what's the club
Speaker 1: seem like? I was like, I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: don't know the racket clubs, okay, what they let me in,
Speaker 1: But I just it was not that kind of big
Speaker 1: party thing for me, and it was yeah, very okay.
Speaker 1: So we've made it to Wednesday. So Wednesday was pre
Speaker 1: tape day, and so we were finally bring We talked
Speaker 1: about Tuesday run through being for the network, then they
Speaker 1: brought up the networking. Tuesday was then the same day
Speaker 1: rehearsal day, and then we run again for network um
Speaker 1: and then Network gets to give notes to Michael, and
Speaker 1: then Michael get deliver's notes to us, and then Wednesday
Speaker 1: they bring in cameras and we shoot everything that we're
Speaker 1: not going to shoot in front of the audience. So
Speaker 1: all of the sets that take place directly in front
Speaker 1: of the audience are usually the ones that you want
Speaker 1: the audience to see. Anything that's called on a swing
Speaker 1: set that's like off to the side that you can't see,
Speaker 1: you shoot that stuff, or a scene that maybe does
Speaker 1: take place right in front of the audience but is
Speaker 1: very intricate or detailed or extremely long and it's going
Speaker 1: to take a long time and you don't have that
Speaker 1: much time in front of the audience. You shoot that
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, So that is called pre tape day. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: on our show, they started bringing in an audience for
Speaker 1: that pre tape day. Do you remember this? They figured out, Yes,
Speaker 1: they figured out that we really thrived with an audience.
Speaker 1: I mean, like all you know, good comedy shows and
Speaker 1: so what they they figured out that on Wednesdays they
Speaker 1: could bring in school buses of school kids and like
Speaker 1: make it like a field trip. So we started having
Speaker 1: really small audiences of just high schoolers or like kids
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. So we started doing our pre tape with
Speaker 1: an audience, which is really unusual. Yeah, that was something
Speaker 1: that I don't think other shows ever really did. And
Speaker 1: what you know, I might have been jumping ahead. It
Speaker 1: might not have been until third or fourth season that
Speaker 1: we started doing that, but certainly, like we we broke
Speaker 1: the sort of a calm rules by having an audience.
Speaker 1: Did we do that through the end? By see if
Speaker 1: the season seven we were bringing in an audience on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Really I kind of remember it at the end. I
Speaker 1: kind of remember a weird but Thursday, we still pre
Speaker 1: tape stuff in the early part of the day, right
Speaker 1: we'd be pre taping, we'd be rehearsing for camera because
Speaker 1: the camera people, you have four cameras going at the
Speaker 1: same time and basically The way you you shoot a
Speaker 1: sitcom multi camera sitcom is that you're performing at like
Speaker 1: a play, and then the cameras are also constantly moving. There,
Speaker 1: these big cameras on wheels, so the camera operators have
Speaker 1: to make sure that they set up the shot for
Speaker 1: the joke or for the person that has the next line,
Speaker 1: So they're basically memorizing the script like the actors, or
Speaker 1: they're just kind of on the fly making sure that
Speaker 1: they get the shots that they need. So it's like
Speaker 1: this interesting ballet between the actors moving around the set
Speaker 1: doing the scene and the cameras where the fourth wall
Speaker 1: is also moving around and shifting and trading places. And
Speaker 1: so we would rehearse to get that of them down
Speaker 1: so that we could only do we would only have
Speaker 1: to do two or three takes in front of the
Speaker 1: audience and just really make it, give it that live sense,
Speaker 1: you know, like what I mean. And this is the
Speaker 1: form that I love. Lucy really established. They did it
Speaker 1: with three cameras. By the time they got to us,
Speaker 1: it was four cameras, um. And it's an amazing form.
Speaker 1: I mean it it's kind of old fashioned now, right,
Speaker 1: it's like gone out of style. It's but it's almost
Speaker 1: like a radio play, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: like it doesn't look real like the set, you know,
Speaker 1: the way people interact, with the way people move, it's
Speaker 1: not realistic, but it's so fun. It's it's it's like
Speaker 1: sort of the last connection between television and live theater.
Speaker 1: And as an actor, it's the best because it's so
Speaker 1: much easier. Like when you do single camera shows, you
Speaker 1: have to you know, redo the same thing over and
Speaker 1: over for a million different camera angles. They have to
Speaker 1: adjust the lighting every time. In this case, you just
Speaker 1: do it two or three times and you try and
Speaker 1: make it as funny as possible. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's also really great to what was back then a
Speaker 1: special because we there was no social media, so we
Speaker 1: didn't have direct contact with people watching the show ever
Speaker 1: unless we were out in the world after the show
Speaker 1: started airing, and every now and then people might say, hey,
Speaker 1: are you I watched that show, But otherwise our our
Speaker 1: direct contact with people who watched the show was non existent.
Speaker 1: And so getting a group of people whether or not
Speaker 1: they had ever seen the shoot the show before, we
Speaker 1: didn't know or didn't care, but we knew people were
Speaker 1: going to get to see us do it in live time,
Speaker 1: and the energy that the audience brings from the moment
Speaker 1: it's Thursday morning, we just know like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I have this live, live show day energy. And you
Speaker 1: could hear them getting loaded into the audience and we're
Speaker 1: getting our hair and makeup done backstage and you know
Speaker 1: we're back. We're backstage and we're cracking jokes and I
Speaker 1: Will is making fun of everyone's wardrobe. And then ritual,
Speaker 1: a cast ritual. We had the cast screens scream because
Speaker 1: they would introduce us one by one in front of
Speaker 1: the audience to start the show. Because I have a
Speaker 1: war up MC comedian named Mitch what was Bank? Mitch
Speaker 1: Bank was our warm up. He was a comedian actor guy,
Speaker 1: and so to produce Michael's other show, and he em
Speaker 1: seed every one of our episodes from start to finish,
Speaker 1: and he um so he would warm up the audience
Speaker 1: and just talk to them, play games with them or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then he would introduce us one at a time.
Speaker 1: And so we would gather backstage behind one of the sets,
Speaker 1: usually the living room set, and we would be so
Speaker 1: nervous and excited and all the stuff that would be
Speaker 1: going into the week would just be bubbling and we
Speaker 1: would put our hands together in a circle and scream
Speaker 1: at the top of our lungs, and then we would
Speaker 1: get introduced one by one um and then they would
Speaker 1: be off to the races, getting the show that you know,
Speaker 1: I have to say exactly what Danielle was just talking about.
Speaker 1: I might miss that energy before the show of all
Speaker 1: of us standing back there, and it's exactly like Danielle said,
Speaker 1: there's there's this. It takes over all your senses. You
Speaker 1: hear the audience come in, if you feel the temperature
Speaker 1: in the building rise a bit because there's now three
Speaker 1: people in there. You hear them laughing at the warm up.
Speaker 1: But especially when the later seasons, when you knew they
Speaker 1: waited in line because they just wanted to see us.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, hey, what's this show? It's I can't
Speaker 1: believe I get a chance to see Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1: And there was such an energy about that that you
Speaker 1: feel like you can walk on water and all the
Speaker 1: lights are down to it's all dark for the first
Speaker 1: time because the week it's all just been you know,
Speaker 1: worklights and you're just in the giant warehouse. But that
Speaker 1: night everything gets dark. It's pitch black. Backstage, you're in
Speaker 1: your wardrobe. You've got you know, it's like you've got
Speaker 1: you've got crisp new clothes on, you know your lines,
Speaker 1: You're ready to go. You're thinking about the jokes. We
Speaker 1: have such a tight like bond because we've been working
Speaker 1: on this through the week, so we've seen the evolution
Speaker 1: of the script and of our characters and of our
Speaker 1: rehearsal process, and we've complained to each other and maybe
Speaker 1: like we've definitely rooted for each other, and we've seen
Speaker 1: us get bad notes and good notes, and here it is.
Speaker 1: It's all culminating in this moment, and it's the most
Speaker 1: fun three and a half hours. You work the entire
Speaker 1: week for those three and a half hours, and they
Speaker 1: call your name and you run out, and the audience screams,
Speaker 1: and you get to see all your friends standing there
Speaker 1: waiting to get knowing they feel exactly the way you do.
Speaker 1: It's such a bond with the cast and uh and
Speaker 1: then they yell action and you're just off to the races.
Speaker 1: It's it's wonderful. It's wonderful, it really is. I miss it.
Speaker 1: So I am very very excited for this podcast because I, Um,
Speaker 1: I really want to do like this big nostalgia dive,
Speaker 1: not just two for the show, but even just for
Speaker 1: my own life. I'm excited to do this nostalgia dive
Speaker 1: and talk about what we're wearing and what the style was,
Speaker 1: and whether or not I would still wear the thing
Speaker 1: I'm wearing back then or whether I would never be
Speaker 1: caught dead in it. Um. I'm looking forward to all
Speaker 1: of that. I'm also super excited. We're going to have
Speaker 1: ton of amazing guests. We are going to have Train McGee,
Speaker 1: Betsy Randall, Rusty Russ who played Mom and Dad, Bill Daniels.
Speaker 1: Of course, the famous Mr Feeney is going to be
Speaker 1: joining us. Um, We're going to have Matt Lawrence, maitland Ward.
Speaker 1: We're also going to invite a lot of our famous
Speaker 1: guest stars. Jason Marsden, who we already mentioned, is hopefully
Speaker 1: going to come by and Okay, great, Yeah, We're gonna
Speaker 1: have a lot of a lot of great guest stars.
Speaker 1: We're also going to have writers and directors and crew
Speaker 1: if we're able to find them. Like talking about wardrobe,
Speaker 1: there are several wardrobe people I would love to have
Speaker 1: on to talk about what The inspiration behind shirts on
Speaker 1: shirts on shirts was how many? The question became how
Speaker 1: many hoods could you wear? Is three was one too many?
Speaker 1: Too many? Let's find out about focus on. I mean,
Speaker 1: hair was a big one, which is so weird because
Speaker 1: like I just remember thinking, like why do they care?
Speaker 1: And then it became a thing like our hair. You know,
Speaker 1: people cared about it, like audiences would like, you know,
Speaker 1: like my hairstyle, this butt cut middle part, what do
Speaker 1: you want to call it? I don't even know. It's
Speaker 1: like become this iconic thing that I couldn't escape. You know,
Speaker 1: I still can't escape, but uh, and like I just yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot, there's a lot lot going. It
Speaker 1: was a big Hair was a big thing. Hair was
Speaker 1: a thing on our show. Yeah, very strange. So why
Speaker 1: don't we talk about some frequently asked questions? Just to
Speaker 1: get some of these things out of the way. We
Speaker 1: know that we know you have them. We get asked
Speaker 1: them all the time. I think the number one most
Speaker 1: frequently asked question as of late is where's Corey? Just
Speaker 1: like that because they don't know his name, Because you know,
Speaker 1: we get referred to as our characters more often than
Speaker 1: not Um and we get it. You know, we were
Speaker 1: in your house every week for seven years with those
Speaker 1: names not as Danielle Writer, Ben and and Will Um.
Speaker 1: So where is Ben Savage? Ben Savage is um doing
Speaker 1: his own thing. He's doing Lifetime movies. He's busy. We
Speaker 1: would love for him to have been a part of
Speaker 1: the show. We asked him to be a part of
Speaker 1: the show. Um, we have been talking about this podcast
Speaker 1: since two thousand eighteen. Yeah, it was actually Will's idea
Speaker 1: was your idea? It was my I was the first person.
Speaker 1: We all went to a convention, because conventions when we
Speaker 1: get to meet our fans. And after one of the conventions,
Speaker 1: I was like, why don't we just do a podcast
Speaker 1: where we watch it? And it was before everybody did
Speaker 1: it now everybody. It was literally it was before office ladies.
Speaker 1: It was before rewatch podcasts or even a thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: writer was Writer's idea. I was going to take the
Speaker 1: credit to well, I'll take the credit my idea idea.
Speaker 1: And we were like, wow, that is a really good idea.
Speaker 1: We should talk about it. And then we talked about
Speaker 1: it with Ben and Ben was like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's really my thing, and we said, okay, we totally
Speaker 1: understand and we'll come back to you if it ever
Speaker 1: becomes anything. And then we took a couple of meetings
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and eight talked about it. Then
Speaker 1: UM brought it up to Ben again and said, are
Speaker 1: you sure this is something we really want to do.
Speaker 1: We think it could be really great and he said,
Speaker 1: it just really is not my thing and we have
Speaker 1: respected that, and UM, it's not his thing. So that
Speaker 1: is why Ben is not here. UM, and let's see
Speaker 1: other frequently asked questions. Uh, we always get asked what
Speaker 1: our favorite episode is that? Yes, which, and it's always
Speaker 1: the same thing. We always say it's we call it
Speaker 1: the screen episode, the screen episode, but it was called
Speaker 1: and then there was Sean, which was the Halloween episode.
Speaker 1: I think there are a bit more answers to that question, though,
Speaker 1: because depends on what you mean. That is my favorite
Speaker 1: episode because of the memory of making it. But if
Speaker 1: you ask me what the quality of the episode is,
Speaker 1: I think there are other answers. And I'm so curious
Speaker 1: because I only have memories. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: watching it, there's going to be a new answer, basically,
Speaker 1: like going to discover oh, that is like a solid episode,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of objectively speaking, not just your
Speaker 1: memories of it. To your point, the Scream episode is
Speaker 1: my favorite episode for the memory of making it as
Speaker 1: an ensemble. I have other favorite memories of like favorite episodes,
Speaker 1: especially from season one that just we're really salient to
Speaker 1: me as a little girl making the show like will.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite episodes is the episode where out
Speaker 1: of nowhere randomly to Panga has a crush on Eric
Speaker 1: and Eric that was a great episode. No recollection of
Speaker 1: thatch a good episode. Grab your face, you come in
Speaker 1: to kiss me, to kiss you, kiss me, you palm,
Speaker 1: and I can remember what your palm smelled like, Like
Speaker 1: I right, for someone who has no memories at all,
Speaker 1: I remember, and I think it was because it was
Speaker 1: super awkward. It was award you know, you were sixteen
Speaker 1: and I was twelve at that time and you were twelve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I and it was it was just awkward and weird,
Speaker 1: and I remember, but I remember you being so like Obviously,
Speaker 1: I haven't even been on stage for very long. This
Speaker 1: was maybe even only my third, maybe my fourth episode ever. Um,
Speaker 1: but you were so easy to be around. We had
Speaker 1: such a good time. And then as we know, to
Speaker 1: Panga and Eric were practically never we never really had
Speaker 1: scenes were reinteracted like that episode is one of my
Speaker 1: favorites for that reason, So yes, I remember that episode.
Speaker 1: Is hard to pin down because we have favorites for
Speaker 1: so many different reasons. And it will change. I think
Speaker 1: writer's right when we watch it will change for exactly
Speaker 1: that reason, like oh that one was special to me
Speaker 1: or this one, and then yeah, they will get into
Speaker 1: the whole thing because they then went weird with with
Speaker 1: Eric and to Pango where then it was like we
Speaker 1: ended up in bed together at one point, and do
Speaker 1: you remember do you remember this where I'm like, I
Speaker 1: need a roommate, so you'd get it, you like get
Speaker 1: ready for bed and you slide into bed and then
Speaker 1: I'm over there. I'm in bed like hey, roomy because
Speaker 1: that's not creepy at all. I'm just be with you.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah, they would. They did stuff like
Speaker 1: that too, where it was just like, oh, that's really weird.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get in bed with my brother's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: like really bizarre stuff. So yeah, that was will unpack
Speaker 1: all as we keep saying, we'll unpack all this as
Speaker 1: we go, we'll unpack that for sure. Um. Any other
Speaker 1: frequently asked questions we want to touch on here? Phoene call? Yes,
Speaker 1: why don't you do the Phoene call anyway? Is the question? Um,
Speaker 1: why don't you do? There's a number of reasons I
Speaker 1: don't do the Phoene call. Um, there there really are,
Speaker 1: and one of them is so, if I'm being totally honest,
Speaker 1: I was upset with the way the Phoene call was
Speaker 1: taken from me, which is the absolute truth. So when
Speaker 1: we start, when they started Girl Meets World, Michael without
Speaker 1: and again I'm not trying to bash Michael in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, but without any apologized to me for this, frankly, Um,
Speaker 1: without calling me, without letting me know, without doing anything.
Speaker 1: He just popped in a tape of the Phoene Call
Speaker 1: to the to Rowan and Sabrina and said, you guys
Speaker 1: are now doing this. You're both doing this when you
Speaker 1: meet Mr Phoenie. Uh. Other than it's saying Phoenie with
Speaker 1: an exclamation point in the script, the Phoenie call was mine,
Speaker 1: like I created that out of whole cloth. It was
Speaker 1: just I just made that my own. So I thought
Speaker 1: without even being asked to then take it and give
Speaker 1: it away. Um, I didn't think was very cool. Uh
Speaker 1: So Michael apologized to me. He's like, you're right, that
Speaker 1: was And I told him that. I was like, that's
Speaker 1: you know, that wasn't cool. He's like, I didn't even
Speaker 1: he he said, look, I honestly didn't even think about
Speaker 1: it that way. You're right I should have. Let's do
Speaker 1: some kind of passing of the torch. And I went
Speaker 1: in front of the audience at Girl Meets World, I
Speaker 1: did it one more time and I said I passed
Speaker 1: it on to the girls. And I got that because
Speaker 1: and this is a true story, I was doing a
Speaker 1: cartoon called ThunderCats, which was one of my favorite cartoons
Speaker 1: ever growing up, and I got a chance to play
Speaker 1: lion O and the original lion O actor Larry Kenny,
Speaker 1: played my dad on the show. And he was at
Speaker 1: a convention and he's he actually sent me the clip
Speaker 1: and I thought this was really cool where somebody said,
Speaker 1: can you do the famous lion lion ThunderCats hoe and
Speaker 1: he said, I will do it one more time for you.
Speaker 1: But then it's Wills and I am officially packed passing
Speaker 1: the torch and I thought that was cool. He says
Speaker 1: he's never done it since. He knows he has, but
Speaker 1: he says he's never done it since. Um so I
Speaker 1: took that coupled with kind of like you know, that
Speaker 1: was mine and you gave it away, And I liked
Speaker 1: this passing the torch thing, and I have haven't done
Speaker 1: it since. It's also interesting. I mean, I know you've
Speaker 1: talked about to me, you've talked, you've expressed this before.
Speaker 1: You didn't even realize you had a catchphrase. It was
Speaker 1: it was It was one of those funny bits. We
Speaker 1: did a lot of bits on the show. Like you
Speaker 1: remember in the first season, Ben kept saying like I'm
Speaker 1: super boy or something. You did that, and they like
Speaker 1: they try these things out and give us like catch
Speaker 1: phrases or repetitive jokes, and like the Phoene Call was
Speaker 1: just one of the many, like your your character has
Speaker 1: so many. So it's really only in retrospect that it
Speaker 1: became like a defining characteristic of the show. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: also wasn't even named the Phoene Call until the last episode.
Speaker 1: The very last episode, Eric says to to Phoenie, you know,
Speaker 1: come on, be honest, you love the Phoene call. You're
Speaker 1: gonna miss the Phoene call. That's the first time that
Speaker 1: was ever said. So it wasn't even a It was
Speaker 1: just it would say Mr Feenie, and I would then
Speaker 1: make it nine minutes long. I mean that was all
Speaker 1: that it was. It wasn't like the Phoene call. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that I had. I had my own.
Speaker 1: Did I do that? I didn't know that. It's like
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know that. So yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 1: That's that. That's the story behind the Phoenie call. Are
Speaker 1: there any other what are the frequently asked question? Because
Speaker 1: we do we always get the same frequently asked kind
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, I had a document with them
Speaker 1: written down, and I don't know where the document is.
Speaker 1: So that's a frequently asked question for Danielle is where
Speaker 1: did you put that? Where? I got him? I got him,
Speaker 1: I got him? Are you still friends? I think that
Speaker 1: that much is obvious. You don't even need to answer that.
Speaker 1: Oh did you actually cut your hair? O? Good one.
Speaker 1: I sure did, with real scissors and everything. We can't
Speaker 1: talk to me. We'll talk about that when that episode
Speaker 1: comes around. Um, that's another week that I do have
Speaker 1: very um strong memories, mostly of people yelling off stage
Speaker 1: on the night it was going to happen. Um. It
Speaker 1: was such a the amount of stress. Again, the importance
Speaker 1: placed on hair in this show is weird, um, but
Speaker 1: there was so much stress around the cutting of the
Speaker 1: hair because you only get really one good take at it.
Speaker 1: You get one good this before, and once that's cut,
Speaker 1: you can't go back to Danielle has super long hair,
Speaker 1: certainly not quick um. And it was Mike. I remember
Speaker 1: the negotiation with Michael show me where, show me where
Speaker 1: You're getting no because he did not want me to
Speaker 1: cut my hair short. And you also have to This
Speaker 1: was the first time you would ever cut your hair
Speaker 1: in life. In life, I had I had a trim
Speaker 1: when I was three years old because from the time
Speaker 1: I was too my hair reached my butt. And when
Speaker 1: I turned three, I had these little ringlet at the
Speaker 1: bottom of my hair, and my mom decided I needed
Speaker 1: a trim and she basically just cut the ringlets off
Speaker 1: and that was the last time I ever cut my hair.
Speaker 1: So I was either fifteen or sixteen years old. Other
Speaker 1: than little trims, you know, I would get little little
Speaker 1: like I'm talking half an inch off the bottom of
Speaker 1: my hair. Otherwise I had that super long hair my
Speaker 1: entire life. And yes, I got to be fifteen, sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. I think I was fifteen, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to cut my hair. And I asked Michael over
Speaker 1: a summer break, so our again, our schedule, we usually
Speaker 1: started our seasons in August and then we would shoot
Speaker 1: for three weeks, take a week off, shoot for three weeks,
Speaker 1: take a week off, and then during holidays we get
Speaker 1: two weeks off and we would shoot then straight until May,
Speaker 1: and then May would start our summer break and we
Speaker 1: would go on summer break from middle of May until August.
Speaker 1: And somewhere in that summer I called Michael and said,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to cut my hair. I guess
Speaker 1: I just knew that. I wasn't that I couldn't just
Speaker 1: cut it, but like it was like in my can tracked.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I knew better than to just
Speaker 1: do it. And I said, I want to cut my hair.
Speaker 1: Are you okay with that? And he said no, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: no oh no, no, no, no no, And then it
Speaker 1: was like, please, I've never cut it. I'm really tight
Speaker 1: hot and I've never done it. I just I want
Speaker 1: something new, And he said okay, but then you have
Speaker 1: to let me, let me at least write an episode
Speaker 1: about it. And I said okay. So I had to
Speaker 1: wait until the episode came around. Um, so yes, I
Speaker 1: really did cut my hair. Uh, and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to talk about it when that episode gets around. That's
Speaker 1: that's going to be really fun. You just said something
Speaker 1: really interesting because it just had me flashback on something
Speaker 1: to you instantly snapped to this place of I can't
Speaker 1: do anything with my body or looks without permission, asking permission,
Speaker 1: even when it was never really specifically said to. But
Speaker 1: I remember asking if I could get a tattoo, asking
Speaker 1: if I could cut my hair, asking if I It's like,
Speaker 1: we just knew we're not allowed to do any of
Speaker 1: this with it. Writer, weren't Wasn't there something where you
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to roller blade? After a while, No, I
Speaker 1: I went bungee jumping and skydiving. Remember the director that
Speaker 1: we've just been like, don't, don't, don't, don't tell the producers,
Speaker 1: don't don't tell them you're doing this stuff. I did
Speaker 1: that with helicopter lessons, where you can't we can't let
Speaker 1: you fly, And I was like, I don't think they
Speaker 1: ever told me to not rollerblade, but that makes such
Speaker 1: a great ninth story that maybe the story I heard
Speaker 1: frequently asked questions. The story I heard was that you
Speaker 1: were rollerblading at uh the oak Woid where we all lived,
Speaker 1: and somebody broke their leg. It wasn't you, but somebody
Speaker 1: broke their leg. Your mom my mom broke because that
Speaker 1: was the four boy meats world. That was because I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I thought then the story I heard
Speaker 1: as they heard about that, they were like, no more rollerblading,
Speaker 1: Like that's it, You're done. Wait did you both live
Speaker 1: at Oakwood when you first when the show first season
Speaker 1: of the show, we both lived at Oakwood's. I was
Speaker 1: in the Z building and I was okay, then that
Speaker 1: was the year I was in qu Okay because we
Speaker 1: were pretty far away if I remember the buildings that Okay,
Speaker 1: So just for everybody in the oak Wod apartments of
Speaker 1: these legendary month to month furnished apartments that all actors,
Speaker 1: especially child actors, would live in because you can move
Speaker 1: and their families you can move in for one month
Speaker 1: at a time, and it would have all the furniture,
Speaker 1: and so everybody would come for pilot season or to
Speaker 1: make a movie or to do one show, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so we would live there with our you know, you
Speaker 1: live with your roommate, Spencer. I lived with my brother
Speaker 1: who was on a TV show at the same time
Speaker 1: that we were doing Boy Met the World. He was
Speaker 1: on The Mommy's We both had TV shows going at
Speaker 1: the same starting at the same time, and so my
Speaker 1: mom would be shuttling us from both sets. But we
Speaker 1: all lived at the oak Woods, which is this just
Speaker 1: this hilly apartment complex in Burbank and it's all paved,
Speaker 1: so it was rollerblading heaven. I mean it was also
Speaker 1: like summer camp for me, Like we would go for
Speaker 1: pilot season and you need all these child actors who
Speaker 1: would be coming from all over the country, and you'd
Speaker 1: all just hang out at the pool and the hot
Speaker 1: blade together. We'll have so many oak with child child
Speaker 1: actors and divorced men. That's the people that lived at
Speaker 1: the oak Wand for the record, I did not live
Speaker 1: at the oak Wood because I'm a native Native Southern Californian,
Speaker 1: So I lived with my family. We lived in calabasas
Speaker 1: Um I just because Yeah, you kept saying we all
Speaker 1: lived there, and I was like, Oh, they're going to
Speaker 1: think we all went the same complex. I have one
Speaker 1: more frequently asked question which I think would be a
Speaker 1: good one to go out on, and we have to
Speaker 1: keep it kind of brief because we go, but what
Speaker 1: are you guys doing now? A podcast? That's a real question, John,
Speaker 1: I know this is the where are they now questioned?
Speaker 1: A little bio of we're what we've been up to?
Speaker 1: Okay from Since two thousand seventeen, I have been a
Speaker 1: full time sitcom TV director UM, which is just a
Speaker 1: continuation of what we're talking about here. It's something that
Speaker 1: I didn't know I ever wanted to do. I got
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do it for the first time on
Speaker 1: Girl Mead's World, Uh, fell in love with it and
Speaker 1: have been very fortunate to be able to make a
Speaker 1: career of it. UM. So I've been doing that full time.
Speaker 1: I also my husband Jensen and I have a production company.
Speaker 1: We have a couple of shows UM in early stages
Speaker 1: of production. We have a pilot out and a few
Speaker 1: their things UM. And then I also have a hair
Speaker 1: care company, which I am extremely proud of. And it
Speaker 1: is a very small team. There are four of us
Speaker 1: total in the entire company, from development to being delivered
Speaker 1: on your doorstep. We're involved in every single aspect of it. UM.
Speaker 1: It's called Be Free by Daniel Fishel and uh. I
Speaker 1: love it and I'm super proud of it. And then
Speaker 1: I also have two children, which, although that is a
Speaker 1: personal life thing, it's also a job. Yeah you go, writer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am also a father. Right now, I am full
Speaker 1: time solo parenting well of my wife, who is an
Speaker 1: actor's producer, director writer, is off producing a feature film
Speaker 1: in New York at the moment, so this I am
Speaker 1: on a month. I'm about eight weeks into solo parenting
Speaker 1: while she's gone. So my main job right now is
Speaker 1: raising in our seven year old and making sure, you know,
Speaker 1: he gets the school and his shoelaces are tied, which
Speaker 1: is lovely and awesome. I also run a I do
Speaker 1: in my own podcast, which is called Literary Disco. I
Speaker 1: am a huge book nerd, which you guys will remember
Speaker 1: from way back. I always have been so literary discos.
Speaker 1: So I've been doing that for like ten years, podcasting
Speaker 1: about books UM. And we're relaunching a new season of
Speaker 1: that I'm by. My main job is writer, writer, director.
Speaker 1: I directed a lot of The Girl Meets World episodes
Speaker 1: and really loved it. I've made a bunch of short
Speaker 1: films and but mostly I've made a living for the
Speaker 1: last twelve years as a screenwriter. Uh you know. And
Speaker 1: of course the life of a screenwriter is you write
Speaker 1: movies and then they never actually get made. Um. But
Speaker 1: I've been paid and I've been doing you know, I've
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it. But I'm ready to write and direct
Speaker 1: an actual movie movie on my own, a feature. I
Speaker 1: love it, um. I you know. I stopped acting probably
Speaker 1: ten years ago, and it was the best decision I
Speaker 1: ever made. As much as I love actors and I
Speaker 1: love the industry, I really like being within it, but
Speaker 1: on the other side of the camera. So directing is
Speaker 1: my dream job. It's a very hard job to get.
Speaker 1: So writing is what I do all the time. Are
Speaker 1: you writing anything with anyone you know? Right now? Actually,
Speaker 1: one of my like one of my many projects is
Speaker 1: with the incredibly talented wilfordl We're ready to feature script
Speaker 1: right now. Um yeah, And it's probably the best thing
Speaker 1: I'm working on right now. I'm really excited about it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're very excited. UM. I left the industry at the
Speaker 1: on camera side of the industry as well due to
Speaker 1: an anxiety disorder, which I've talked about a lot of times.
Speaker 1: I will be getting back on camera eventually. I'm slowly
Speaker 1: but surely getting there. But my love and passion since
Speaker 1: I was nineteen twenty years old has been voiceover voiceover industry. UM.
Speaker 1: I've written for a number of the animated series that
Speaker 1: I do, and it is still the joy of my
Speaker 1: life to be a voiceover actor. I have a movie
Speaker 1: that just came out last week called DC Superhero Girls
Speaker 1: and Teen Titans Mayhem in the Multiverse. I have two
Speaker 1: new series coming out which I'm not allowed to talk
Speaker 1: about right as of yet, but they're very very cool.
Speaker 1: And I also do a podcast about the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: about the voiceover industry called I Hear Voices with Christy Carlson,
Speaker 1: Roma Know who. I did a show called Kim Possible
Speaker 1: with and Uh. We do a show where not only
Speaker 1: do we interview all of the best voiceover actors in
Speaker 1: the world, but amateur voiceover actors get to come on
Speaker 1: and actually do a voiceover session. With those voiceover actors,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna take all that stuff and animated,
Speaker 1: so people get to be in their own cartoon. It
Speaker 1: is very fun. It's called I hear voices. Check it out.
Speaker 1: But that has been my life. And then I do
Speaker 1: a bunch of conventions, hopefully a lot of them. With
Speaker 1: these people here who I love like family. We do
Speaker 1: do something together which is pretty amazing. And I get
Speaker 1: to travel the world with my wife and uh just
Speaker 1: meet fans and it's absolutely wonderful. So that's what I've
Speaker 1: been doing. I have one final question for all of us,
Speaker 1: what is the what's the best thing you can hope
Speaker 1: for coming out of this podcast and rewatching Boy meets
Speaker 1: World and what is the thing you're the most nervous
Speaker 1: or scared of? Like high point, low point? What's the
Speaker 1: best and worst of what we're about to and indulge
Speaker 1: ourselves in. Wow, good question. Do you have anything off
Speaker 1: the top of your head? Writer? I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have you know. I was I was at a
Speaker 1: wedding like a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago
Speaker 1: as a friend's wedding, and um, I met an actress
Speaker 1: comedian who was there you know, it was one of
Speaker 1: those three day weddings. So this is like day three
Speaker 1: when we were actually at the wedding and sitting down
Speaker 1: and she was like, hey, you know I grew up
Speaker 1: on on your show. Um, and you know you're really cool,
Speaker 1: like you seem like really healthy and like really cool.
Speaker 1: What how do you relate to that show now? Like
Speaker 1: what do you what do you? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about it? And it was like the most for the
Speaker 1: first time, I was like I have such a long answer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, I say for the first time because
Speaker 1: I think that for every other stage in my life
Speaker 1: I had really pat easy answers. You know, it was
Speaker 1: I'm so lucky to be on the TV show, or
Speaker 1: then it was like, oh no, I'm just a student
Speaker 1: now I don't want to talk about that, or and
Speaker 1: you know, I just felt such a mature question like
Speaker 1: here I am early forties with another actor in their
Speaker 1: forties asking me a very honest question like what was that?
Speaker 1: And and I realized I could talk for probably an
Speaker 1: hour and a half if I let myself. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that's what this show is for me personally,
Speaker 1: like is trying to come to terms with the with
Speaker 1: what Boy Meets World means because it had such a
Speaker 1: cultural impact outside of my control. When you're a kid actor,
Speaker 1: like we were saying about our hair and what not,
Speaker 1: so many things are outside of your control, and as
Speaker 1: positive as that can be, because like, hey, I made
Speaker 1: enough money to be able to send myself through college,
Speaker 1: you know, like my parents didn't have to pay for that. Um,
Speaker 1: I've been able to have this great life as access
Speaker 1: point to the writing career that I now have. So
Speaker 1: there's so many positive things that came from Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of negative memories I have of
Speaker 1: of of how it affected my life and and for
Speaker 1: a long time I wanted to be anything but Seawan
Speaker 1: Hunter from Boy Meets World. I spent most of my
Speaker 1: twenties running away from it. And now I'm at a
Speaker 1: place where I think I can kind of be mature
Speaker 1: enough to see see it from both sides and to
Speaker 1: talk that out. So I don't have an easy answer,
Speaker 1: but I think that that's why we should do this
Speaker 1: podcast is because I think it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: really complicated question and has a really complicated answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think that's that's kind of where I
Speaker 1: would go. I mean, the the high point for me
Speaker 1: is doing it with both of you. Um, the being
Speaker 1: able to do something that Again, I watched the first
Speaker 1: episode and I genuinely had a huge spike of anxiety
Speaker 1: pressing play before I hit the first episode of the show.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that helps me and always
Speaker 1: has helped me, is being around people that I love
Speaker 1: and I trust and knowing that I'm with the both
Speaker 1: of you and going on this journey where we can
Speaker 1: talk about all this stuff together and you're talking about
Speaker 1: it with people that went through the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're in the trenches together, and while our
Speaker 1: experiences might have differed, we can come at it from
Speaker 1: the same place, which is something that I'm very much
Speaker 1: looking forward to. What scares me is pulling back the
Speaker 1: curtain to realize that the great and powerful Laws is
Speaker 1: just a man. Uh. That's what scares me is that
Speaker 1: these memories that I have that are so wonderful for me,
Speaker 1: uh and so incredible that really, when I do look
Speaker 1: at them as an adult, I might look back and
Speaker 1: maybe they're not as great as I remember them being. Um,
Speaker 1: which again I don't know Frankly and I and there
Speaker 1: there's it's gonna bring up a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of different emotions all the way through, and their emotions
Speaker 1: that I want to We keep using the word unpacked,
Speaker 1: that I want to unpack. I'm glad I'm doing it
Speaker 1: with the both of you. But that's what scares me
Speaker 1: the most is I I have maybe put the show
Speaker 1: and my experiences on the show on a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pedestal, and I'm making sure that the pedestal
Speaker 1: is marble and not feather. And when I look back,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping it's as I remember. And that's I think
Speaker 1: what scares me the most is is, you know, again
Speaker 1: getting having some of the guest cast come back on,
Speaker 1: and having other people we worked with come back on
Speaker 1: and maybe their experiences weren't that great and and it's
Speaker 1: those kind of things that's gonna make me re look
Speaker 1: at my own past from a different perspective of and
Speaker 1: I think I need to Frankly, I mean, nobody's life
Speaker 1: is perfect. I don't care how amazing you think your
Speaker 1: experience was. It was still just an experience that had
Speaker 1: highs and lows. And Uh, it's going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to go back. So that's again a long winded, a
Speaker 1: long winded answer that got us nowhere, But that's exactly
Speaker 1: kind of how I feel. It's those are those exactly
Speaker 1: why I asked I am. I am very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to going through this with you guys. It says
Speaker 1: it is, for lack of the better term, it's it's
Speaker 1: a safe space. It feels safe to go through this
Speaker 1: with you guys. Um, I'm really looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping, like I said, that it will bring back
Speaker 1: some memories for me, because I do have very fond
Speaker 1: memories of most of the time on Boy Meets World,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to have more of them. Um, every
Speaker 1: time you guys remind me of stuff or say things
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, I don't remember that, I start
Speaker 1: to like, I think, and I think and I think.
Speaker 1: Like when writer mentioned some of the small audience on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: I was like, I do kind of remember that. Towards
Speaker 1: the end, like, oh, that's interesting. So I'm excited to
Speaker 1: say what it brings up. Like I said, I'm excited
Speaker 1: for the nostalgia dive. I will be perfectly honest and
Speaker 1: say that my the thing that makes me the most
Speaker 1: nervous is I know how beloved this show is to
Speaker 1: so many people, and we meet them, We meet fans
Speaker 1: at cons and they tell us these very personal stories
Speaker 1: about what the show meant, and that always means so
Speaker 1: much to us. We walk away from those conventions and
Speaker 1: we say, I am so glad I met everybody that
Speaker 1: I met this weekend and I heard their stories. And
Speaker 1: I want to watch the show and be very honest
Speaker 1: in the podcast about the feelings it brings up for me,
Speaker 1: the thoughts I have about a scene or a storyline
Speaker 1: or the acting, whether it's my own or you know whatever.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to be very honest about it.
Speaker 1: And my what makes me the most nervous is possibly
Speaker 1: ruining something that some maybe even just one memory for
Speaker 1: somebody that they that they love. Um and so that
Speaker 1: makes me nervous. But I'm gonna be I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: have to be very honest about how I feel, and
Speaker 1: hopefully it's it's mostly you know, rosie and fun and wonderful,
Speaker 1: the way it is in my memory. But uh I,
Speaker 1: I just want us to be as honest as possible
Speaker 1: as we go through this, because I think that's gonna
Speaker 1: be what's best for everyone. Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1: That's good. That was a great answer. I want to
Speaker 1: take that one. So next week we're jumping in. We
Speaker 1: are rewatching the pilot, starting in with episode number one
Speaker 1: oh one. The pilot it was called um and So yeah,
Speaker 1: next week, big, big week. I can't wait to jump
Speaker 1: in and uh, listen, writer, I think our first week
Speaker 1: since this podcast was your idea. You have the honors
Speaker 1: of our tagline, we love you all. Pod dismissed Pod
Speaker 1: Meets World as an I heart podcast produced and hosted
Speaker 1: by Daniel Fishel Wilfredel and writer Strong. Executive producers Jensen
Speaker 1: Carp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
Speaker 1: producer and editor, Tara Sudbach, producer, Lorraine Verruez, engineer and
Speaker 1: Boy Meets World super fan Easton Allen. Our theme song
Speaker 1: is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Pod Meets World Show or email us at Pod
Speaker 1: Meets World Show at gmail dot com.