Danielle Fishel was ‘purging and overexercising’ after “Boy Meets World ”creator allegedly told her she gained weight

Leigh BlickleySat, November 14, 2026 at 5:30 PM UTC

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Danielle Fishel on ‘Boy Meets World’ season 7 episode ‘She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs’Credit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via GettyKey Points -

Danielle Fishel opens up about her struggles with body image on the set of Boy Meets World.

After the show’s creator allegedly pointed out her weight gain in season 7, Fishel began “purging and overexercising.”

The actress notes in new tell-all Book Meets World that she tries to overcome that intrusive mindset to this day.

Danielle Fishel is opening up about struggling with her body image as a young girl on the set of Boy Meets World.

The actress, now 45, who starred as Topanga Lawrence on the hit ABC series for seven seasons from 1993 to 2000, admits she became obsessed with her appearance after the show’s creator Michael Jacobs allegedly pointed out her weight gain — and then wrote an episode of TV about it.

In the new tell-all Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World, which Fishel cowrote with Rider Strong, Will Friedle, and collaborator Emily Longeretta, the actress shares that it all began with the season 7 episode “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs.”

“Will had gained some weight. I had gained some weight,” Fishel writes. “[Jacobs said,] ‘Obviously, you guys have gained a little bit of weight, so we’re going to write an episode about it, and we just wanted you to know.”

Fishel adds that the writers told her the episode — in which everyone thinks Topanga is pregnant — would be “really funny,” so she and Friedle accepted the idea and joked about it, but never shared how truly painful it was for them.

“We both laughed and went, ‘I guess we’re doing it,’ while we both were just dying inside,” Friedle shares. “But the fact that I was fat was the fifteenth thing on my list [of what] was wrong with me by season 7. There was so much else going on that the fact that I needed to lose 20 pounds was so far down on the list.”

Fishel, meanwhile, cried over Jacobs’ alleged comments, taking them to heart. The whole ordeal sparked a years-long struggle with disordered thoughts about food and body image issues.

“I had been aware that I gained weight, but I was a size 4,” Fishel, who was 18 at the time, shares. “So I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight to write an entire episode about it,’ and right now I have to say I’m fine with it, because they didn’t even present me another alternative. And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that.’”

Throughout season 7, Fishel was “purging and overexercising,” and decided to stop weighing herself as she knew it led to destructive thoughts.

“I passed out at school once from running. I had not been eating,” she writes. “I don’t think I recognized that, until it was very obvious that I was no longer attractive to [the people in charge] anymore. I became aware that I was now just disposable, and I carried that feeling with me for most of my life.”

Fishel says that perception has been “in my head forever,” and she continues to face “the bad habits and the bad thoughts” that creep up even today. “I have to rein it back in,” she writes in the book.

“One hundred fifteen pounds at five-foot-one is by no means overweight, but the camera does make you look bigger, and my body type changed over the years,” she continues. “I can’t believe I felt as bad as I did. I can’t believe I spent most of my day feeling bad about myself.”

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Danielle Fishel in Nov. 2026Credit: Noam Galai/Getty

Fishel was thankful to have costume designer Julie Yang Silver, who consistently supported and defended her over the years. Silver said she and coworker Karen MacKain “were advocates for Fishel when she wasn’t around,” and had “many heated discussions” with the showrunners about her wardrobe.

When Silver was told Topanga’s wedding dress needed sleeves, for instance, she safeguarded the actress’ body.

“It was a constant conversation,” Silver shares in the book. “Danielle was not heavy. That’s what I was trying to explain to them. But because of her stature, they were so used to seeing [her differently] because she bloomed overnight. Danielle’s not very tall, so if you are bustier and you’re not tall, you’re going to look larger. But she wasn’t.”

Silver says that because Fishel was just a teenager at the time, she wanted to hide what was happening behind the scenes to protect her. “That’s going to get in her head,” she recalls thinking. “And that was the thing that Karen and I were both saying — that she is a young woman, and that could do so much psychological damage. This is so not worth it.”

She continues, “We would do sweaters, and she would be like, ‘I look so huge in this,’ and I was like, ‘Honey, that is an extra small.’”

Eventually, Silver says she stood up to Jacobs, despite being afraid to speak her mind. “At that point, I was kind of like, ‘Okay, fire me. We are not doing this,’” she recalls.

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Looking back now, Fishel wishes she could tell her younger self that “your worth as a person was never in what other people defined as your beauty.”

“I would tell myself that I still deserve to be loved in whatever form my body will take over the next however long I’m alive.”

Entertainment Weekly reached out to Jacobs’ rep for comment.

Book Meets World: The Definitive Inside Story of the Hit Sitcom Boy Meets World is out now.

on Entertainment Weekly

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