Danielle Fishel Paid Less Than Boy Meets World Costars
While Topanga was originally only supposed to be in one Season 1 episode, the character ended up being such a big hit that she was brought back throughout the season before finally becoming a core cast member.
In fact, any fan of the show would tell you that the name “Topanga” is synonymous with Boy Meets World, and she was quickly established as main character Cory Matthews’ love interest — with the two getting married in Season 6.
Danielle even ended up reprising her role in 2014 for the sequel series Girl Meets World, which is about Cory and Topanga’s daughter, and ran for three seasons.
In 2022, Danielle and her former Boy Meets World costars Will Friedle and Rider Strong launched a rewatch podcast, Pod Meets World, where they look back at their time on the show and share behind-the-scenes insight with fans.
For context, Will played Cory’s older brother, Eric, in the show, and was 16 years old when he was cast. Rider was 13 years old in Season 1, and played Cory’s best friend, Shawn.
In one of the podcast’s early episodes, Danielle revealed there was a huge pay disparity between her and her male costars, which led to her dad teaming up with her agent, Judy Savage, in a bid to boost her salary. This included forcing Danielle to boycott a table read, which she was incredibly reluctant to do.
But the topic came up again when Judy joined the gang for an interview on Monday’s episode of Pod Meets World. During the conversation, the now-retired agent recalled how difficult it was to boost Danielle’s pay, and it was revealed that she never reached the same level as her costars.
“You had to double my salary,” Danielle confirmed. “Between, I think, Seasons 4 and 5, I went from making $7,500 an episode to making $15,000 an episode.”
“I always made less than everyone else on the show,” Danielle reiterated. “And they said it’s because of where I started; I had started at a low threshold, I was never going to get up from there. But you did your darnedest, and it was incredible to watch.”
Meanwhile, Will revealed that going into the sixth or seventh season of Boy Meets World, he and Rider banded together to negotiate their new salaries.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Judy reflected on how much actor’s salaries have increased during her years in the business, and said that child actor Luke Edwards, who starred in a whole host of ‘90s movies, got up to $100,000 per movie “really fast.”
She then confirmed that her first client to get a million for just one movie was a High School Musical star.
