Danielle Fishel on equal pay and being called 'difficult' on set

By Grace Kim

Danielle Fishel appeared in all 72 episodes of Girl Meets World, returning to television 14 years after Boy Meets World wrapped. Her account of that return makes the show’s working culture, rather than its plots, the focus of scrutiny.

Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World is available for preorder and on sale Nov. 10. Fishel wrote it with Rider Strong, Will Friedle and Variety’s Emily Longeretta.

Equal pay and an adult partnership

Fishel writes that she was the only one of the three to become a series regular, appearing in all 72 episodes alongside Ben Savage. The pair entered the show as a partnership, with the same salary for both under a “favored-nations” contract (one that guaranteed the pair equal pay).

She said: “I was very, very much looking forward to doing Girl Meets World, and to having a partnership with Ben, where we were two adults on a kids’ show who could be examples of professionalism, showing that you can grow up and be normal in the industry. I wanted to be an advocate.”

When Fishel and Savage reconnected, he had much the same energy as a teenager. “And there are pros to that,” she notes, adding: “Ways that I had matured may have made me boring, but they definitely also made me more professional.” She had changed.

When physical affection became a boundary

Fishel recounts that many cast members playfully and innocently tackled each other when she was a teenager on Boy Meets World. She returned to Girl Meets World at 32, and the cast’s casual physical contact now carried a different weight for her: “Things like that would happen on Girl Meets World, and I was now a married woman,” she says.

“I then started creating boundaries. And those boundaries apparently made me ‘difficult,’” she says. The label turned a personal limit into a source of conflict on set.

She knew the hostility before she knew its language. “They were uncomfortable around me. I knew they rolled their eyes at me when I would raise my hand with a note. I knew they were dismissive of me, but I didn’t know what they were saying behind my back,” she says.

During season 2, Fishel says she learned that Jacobs was calling her “crazy” to others on set. Some colleagues had also referred to her as “crazy” and “difficult.” She describes an exhausting environment in which adults gossiped about and judged her.

The no-hugging rule

Fishel says Disney had a rule barring employees from hugging each other on set. She considered the policy understandable in any workplace and connected it with the changes she had made in her own life. She had seen instances where young actors’ physical play escalated and became problematic.

After working in non-industry positions for years, Fishel returned to the set and concluded that her new experience did not require daily physical contact. She politely asked her coworkers not to hug her. People respected the request.

“People respected it. But you would have thought I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to look me in the eyes anymore,’” she says. Some colleagues assumed her husband was jealous. He was not.

That combination explains the strain Fishel describes: formal acceptance of her request did not remove informal judgment. She often pushed back on storylines she considered inappropriate for the Disney Channel audience. She urged Jacobs to do better and reminded him that the show was his legacy. Sometimes, she says, that intervention worked.

What does this change for performers who set boundaries?

For performers, the practical change is this: a reasonable limit can still draw gossip and resistance from colleagues. Fishel’s account shows why. A boundary can change how a set operates even when everyone formally accepts it. Equal pay, represented by the “favored-nations” contract, did not remove the strain that followed her request.

The book’s Nov. 10 release will let readers weigh the show’s hit status against the workplace tensions Fishel describes. Its specific lesson is that a set can offer equal pay and professional purpose while making personal boundaries difficult to enforce.