TGI-Happening

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to the very first ever Pod Meets World. I am Daniel fishal Aka to Pango Lawrence and then eventually to Pango Lawrence Matthews. H and I am joined this week and all the time by jump in this is right or Strong? I played Sean Patrick Hunter. Is it was my middle name? Patrick? Did that's just come to you out of nowhere? Yeah? Well, because you threw in your full name. I didn't realize. Did to Panga actually change her name to Matthews? That officially I think she was to Pango Lawrence Matthews. Interesting, I think I think my middle name ended up being Patrick. And I definitely remember when they introduced the last name Hunter. It was like, you know, six episodes in. I was like, oh cool, I gotta cool. I got a cool last name now I just had Okay, sorry, I had a memory that came to me because of what you said. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. This is just the way it's gonna go. Guys, Oh is it my turn? I'm sorry? And I am will Fredell. I played Eric Neil Matthews. I want to say and uh, And then at some point he just starts calling himself Kyle. So there was that too. Yeah, Eric. Eric's name changed with the with the times, but yes, it is the three of us together, and I think it was it was Neil at one point. I think again they threw in names for us. Eventually we go like, oh that's our name. Now. Well, the continuity in the nineties was physically non existing. No, not great. We we will definitely touch on that in this podcast. Um which this is a perfect time to tell you exactly what this podcast is. UM So a little history. I guess writer Will and I are very close friends. Um Will actually live so close to me I could run to his house and be on his zoom in about five minutes. If that seriously, I mean, if I really ran, I could be there in thirty five seconds. But um and so we all have varying histories, I guess you would say with boy Meat's World and whether or not any of us have seen them. I know for myself I probably saw almost all, if not all, of the episodes when they aired in the nineties. Because I was twelve years old. It was my first big major role. I was super excited to watch the show that we had filmed probably four or five months before, sitting around Friday Night with my family. We watched the whole t G I F block, like a lot of families did so eventually, once I was in high school, I probably wasn't like on Friday Night necessarily always watching them. But I think I've seen almost all of them at least once, but it would have been back in the nineties, and then since the nineties, I have only seen a handful of episodes a handful of times since then. Um, I have very few memories of what the episodes are about. I actually think I have very few memories of even filming the episodes. Um. And so I'm really excited too kind of rewatch, but also watch for the first time, certainly the first time with like adult eyes, um, and to see what it's like, both the cringe and the not. Um. Yeah, and what about you writer? Um, So I'm pretty extreme and that I think I've only seen maybe four or five episodes of Boy Beats World. Um. Um. Ever, well, I do think I watched most of the first season, like you, Danielle, with my family as like a thing, But there was an episode pretty early on, and I don't know if it was within the first season, but I remember watching it with my family and being so self conscious and just hating the way I looked, and you know, all the like insecurities creeping in and realizing there was nothing I could do about it, and just saying, you know, I'm never gonna watch this show again. And then I didn't. Um, I remember, you know, so I don't know if you guys remember, but I so. I. I grew up in northern California and I would fly home every weekend, every Friday when we were watching the show. So what ended up happening is I would fly from the Bourbank Airport to Oakland Airport and it was like, without fail, Boy Meets World will be playing in the Burbank Airport while I was waiting for my flight, and I can remember again being so insecure and hiding my face. So I basically ran away from boy Meat's World all my life. Um as right as it were, And I think, yeah, so for me, this is really gonna be interesting. Um. You know, my relationship to the show has changed drastically over the years. I now have a kid, um, and I am going to watch this show with my son because he is now he's seven, and he has reached the age where I think it's appropriate to watch Boy Meat's World. Um, certainly the first season and um, and he's like he likes sitcoms now, so yes, so I'm really excited to see it through his eyes. Um, I'm really excited to remember. I actually have a lot of memories of filming. Um, this was a huge part of my life. I UM, so I have. I have a ton of memories to share behind the scenes, especially the early years. I don't know why. I guess when you're younger, you know, these experiences just sort of lock in place. Um. But yeah, but mostly for me, this is about UM. You know, I think I spent a lot of my twenties avoiding Boy Meets World. There was a lot of I went to college in New York right after we finished the show, and I just wanted to be a student. I wanted to be an academic. I now write and direct. I moved away from acting completely, and so a lot it just feels like a lot of my life has been distancing myself from this huge part of my life that, of course of the human population associates me with. UM and you know, and then with Girl Meets World, there was you know, going back to direct that show and like that changed how I felt about so just I'm in an interesting place. I think I'm going to really like the show now. Like I think this is a chance for me to appreciate it the way uh I probably should have at the time, and um, you know, because of my own issues, I did not. Um, so I'm really excited to like feel good about this part of my life because personally it's always felt great. My relationship with you guys has always been so positive. Um, I feel like we have so many shared positive memories and um, I learned so much. But certainly in terms of the cultural like what Boy Meets World is. I didn't watch TV growing up, so like I didn't really understand even what we were doing at the time. So this will be interesting. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a lot to unpack in the first episode. Oh yeah, well we got a uh yeah. My my relationship with the show I think was different was well, it was definitely different than that. Was also different because we were, Um you know, as you get older, four years in a seems like nothing, but sixteen in year twelve and you're both twelve, there's the four years is a big difference. So I had a much different experience on Boy Me tw World than than really any of you. Did you know, I only had to go to school the first year and and uh, you know, it wasn't in the classroom the whole time. But I have seen them all. I haven't seen them since they were on. I watched them when they first came out. I was never a PARTI er kind of Everyone was like, oh, l a kids, and you're at clubs. I still have never been to a club in my entire life, you know, So Friday night I was home essentially, and I would watch Boy Me Tworld. I I did. It's as as horrible as that sounds, um, but I haven't seen them since except for you know we've done. That was a positive experience for you, like watching it? Yeah, yeah, I did. You know. It was one of those things where it was a culmination of a lot of work and it was all I ever wanted to be. Yeah, you were like, yeah, I love a TV actor, And that's all I ever wanted to be was on a sitcom. I know. I always tell people I never wanted to be Michael J. Box on Back to the Future. I wanted to be Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. That's all I ever wanted. So I loved what I was doing. I loved every day of it. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to go to sleep. I just wanted to be on the set. I wanted to be in front of the audience. I wanted to find jokes that weren't there that was like my joy. So I loved every second of it. I mean, again, looking back at it, you you look back with the eyes and adult and you say, well, wow, there's a lot I want to kind of as we said, unpack um. But it was it was as for the product itself, as least as I remember it, you know, seeing it at twenty four, the last time I saw it. And then of course we've done things like we always talked about the Scream episode, which we'll get too. So I've seen that ten times because I've had to you know, oh, we're gonna watch that with an audience, so we're gonna watch that and then do a panel. So it's I've seen that. I've seen the plays with Girls episode because when I came back on Girl Meat World, I had to make sure I remembered what that character is like. But other than that, I haven't but as you both know, I have kind of a creepy memory, So whenever the show is on in front of me, I'm right back where it was. I remember the next line coming, I remember what I felt as I was doing it. I remember what happened backstage, like I remember it all when it's back in front of me. Meanwhile, I'm like, what were we doing? There was a whole episode about like, Yeah, there's so many weird episodes that I look at them like that's me. I see me talking, but I have absolutely zero memory of being in that scene. It's crazy, it's weird. It's more of an empathetic thing for me where I I get the I remember how I felt when I was doing it, and I instantly feel the same way. So it's it's either I'm very anxious, you know, like we'll get into talking about how we're going to watch the first episode, but I watched it first episode and even pressing play, I was anxious. And I knew I was going to be anxious because not only am I an anxious person, but going back into the world, and also because I was so anxious when we did the pilot. I was so anxious when we did the first episode, so I instantly kind of channeled that feeling again. It's very odd to go back, but um, I think it's about time that we do, frankly, because we're coming at it from three different places. Yeah, I hope I have a similar experience to Will, and I wish I had more of a similar memory experience like writer, I don't. I loved every second of doing the show when I was a kid. I loved it, um certainly when we first started season one, season two, season three. By the time we got to the seventh season, sixth season, even I was starting to be like but like the beginning of it, I loved every second of it, and all I cared about was but I got to do more, and I felt the same way Will did, Like I just wanted to be on set. It was hard for me to sleep. I'd get excited, but you know, before the next day of work. And yet, as it's probably something I should unpack in therapy or something, I don't have a lot of memories like I have very like and I don't know why I don't. There was no like trauma in my childhood that I'm aware of. I just I had a really like positive life experience, and I loved being on the show, and yet memories for me over all stages of my life are very few and far between, and I don't really know why. So I have a theory about that. I have So my theory about that is essentially, no matter what you're doing, how extraordinary it is, if you do it every day, it just becomes your day to day life. So going and asking, you know, somebody who wasn't on a television show, talk to me about what it was like, you know, certain weeks during the sixth grade, you're also not going to have those same kind of memories. I mean, it's just well, that's the thing. Our weekly schedule was the same, right, right, and we should talk about that. I feel like we should explain what it was like to actually be on the show because because, yeah, it becomes regular even though each episode is different. There obviously, you know, we're playing the same character, We're in the same sets for the most part, and then behind the scenes, we're following the same schedule every week. We go to school for certain hours, we rehearsed for certain hours, we have the live show on Thursday night where the audience comes in. We're wearing a lot of the same wardrobe. So in a weird way, it lends itself to amnesia, right, it becomes repetitive and you start taking it for granted. Um, But unlike you, Daniel, I was I didn't want to be there from the gig. I remember. I have this very distinct memory of of when we got picked up for the back nine and calling my girlfriend at the time, Bag in Northern Caliber when I was thirteen years old, just so love sick as, which we will certainly talk about because I always was love sick and I just remember telling her like I signed a seven year contract I will be twenty years old, that this show keeps going, and thinking that was just death, like that was going to be the worst thing. Can you imagine if this possibly kept going until I was twenty because I just did, you know, I wanted to be home. I wanted to be like with me and and yeah, and then that's exactly what happened. So question, why were you on the show? Why were you an actor who didn't want the job? What was the motivating factor then to become an actor? Great question. No, I definitely wanted to be an actor. Boy Meat's world was like my job up, do you know what I mean? Like, I was already It's so crazy to think about, but at thirteen, I was all pretty cynical. I had already done. I had already done the TV series that I wanted to do, which was a TV series where I got to play Julie Andrew's son, and I, you know, I had a much bigger part. It was so much fun. It was my first sitcom. We did seven episodes. Blake Edwards was directing, a legendary director. It was like and and we had all the attention, you know, Julie Andrews, the sound of music, Mary Poppins. I was playing her son. I loved it so much. And we had done that for two years before Boy Meets World, and it only filmed seven episodes and they dumped it. The show just got dumped on the summer program on Saturday nights. And so by the time Boy Meets World came around, it was like I had agents and managers and everybody saying, this is good, you should just get on another pilot, just do another pilot this year. And I wanted to do movies. I wanted to do plays. I you know, I started with Lama's Rob like I thought, you know, I just I just thought, like, and here was boy Meets World, which at the time, if you guys remember it is called the untitled Ben Savage Project. It was being built around Ben, and so my part was tiny. I think in the original pilot script only had two lines. And so I, you know, I I wanted to act, but for me, Boy Me Toord was just like one of the many jobs I was doing or that I wanted to do, And so the fact that it became this hit surprised me and sort of threw me for a loop. And like I said, I didn't watch television, so I didn't even really understand like what we were doing, like what a sitcom was versus um a soap opera versus a movie. You know, I I liked movies, but when it came to television, I didn't understand like the form. I didn't I didn't watch that form format growing up. So I always, you know, I just was kind of like lost and kind of felt I felt like an outsider. Frankly um and I felt like an outsider in Los Angeles. I never felt super comfortable like around other actors. And it wasn't until our set that I really became friends with other child actors. You know, I think there's a protective thing. You know, every every child actor has a parent behind them, at least one who's helping them, you know, manage and navigate their career. And yeah, I mean that's true. You were older and you used to just take a bus into New York City right by myself. My parents are lawyers, my dad was. We got a lot to impact that. But yeah, but I mean I guess like for me, there was always this fear sort of you know, bread into me by my parents of like and my parents were always afraid of being a stage parent, right and then being a brady child actor like those There was this fear. It's like this this lingering thing that constantly hangs over you as a child actor, Like you don't want to be like them and they're like these monsters who only care about like, you know, getting the job and fame, and like that was like this bread into me by that by the time I did bore me to world that like it was a protective show that my parents had sort of put around me, like make sure you have a nor more childhood and make sure you stay in school and focus on you know the important things in life, and don't get too caught up like acting is great, the art is great, but don't get too caught up in you know, the craziness. And there was craziness, you know. I mean it's like we did pretty well, Like at a lot of the nineties kid actors turned out way better. But if you think about the eighties, like there was this sort of reputation of like you're going to hold up a liquor store one day if you don't keep working right, or you're gonna you're gonna become a drug addict, or like being a child actor was fraught. It was constantly fraught with this danger like you're gonna fall off a cliff if you're not careful, and your whole life could be ruined. And we all felt that, right, I mean like there was an awareness of that, and I think I just internalized it. So let's let's actually talk a little bit about what our Boy Meets World schedule was, because it wasn't It was a little bit of a unique schedule because Michael Jacobs um celebrates the Sabbath on Friday evenings and so which is when most most shows shoot. Most show shoots, like most shows have a Monday through Friday schedule, which is what I think people think of when they think of starting a work week. You go to work on Monday, you enterer week on Friday, and you have the weekend. UM Michael wanted to have our live studio audience tapings on Thursday nights, which meant our first day of rehearsal was Friday morning. And every show, every sitcom show, starts off UM their week with a table read. So Friday morning we would show up to a room like a conference room and there were lots of chairs set up and the ABC and Disney executives would be sitting in those seats, along with our parents or whoever else was there, our studio teachers, UM, and the some of the crew. And then we had a long conference table set up with name tags for all the actors and that there were two tables. They were set up like a t so a really long one for all the actors. And then at the top of the tea was where the writers, producers Michael Jacobs where and the director where they sit and then we just read the script. Did you guys prep before a table read or did you like to go in cold um. So first of all, I think one of the things we we have to say is we eventually got a room. If if memory serves, when we started, we were in trailers. Do you remember that at at the Disney lot, we were in like this big trailer. I don't remember that at all. So this big trailer is where we had our for I distinctly remember. So my parents to live in the same house back in Connecticut where I grew up. I was home not too long ago, and I was cleaning out my desk and I came upon I kept a diary for like the first three months. I did boy, because of course I was going to write in it every day. And it lasted about three months. And the first entry was the first table read and I literally I read it was the two page thing. And I was talking about how we walked into the trailer. I you know, we met this diary right now, But I remember the thing I remember most about it. So we would I would prep as much as I could, having any idea what I was doing, because we didn't get the scripts the night until the night until the night before. We get the scripts and we get them delivered because of course nothing was emailed so envelope. But drive to our house and drop a script off on the porch, and we will get into more about why that is awful for the production assistant when they're rewriting till four o'clock in the morning. But we get there and I had never done a table read. I did not know we were starting with a table read. I did not know what it was. And they we I walked in with the script. They sat me down at the table. My mom was there. I'll never forget that. And my hands and feet were shaking so much that I kept everything tucked under the table. So for the first table read, it's just like my head was sticking above the table as everything was shaking, and so I prepped as much as I could. But I didn't know anybody. I didn't know what I was doing. We will get into watching first episode. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing until several episodes into the series. Um, but it was it was really scary. And then you read it like a straight play. You read it straight through, like from beginning to end. Somebody's reading the stage directions to Pango, walks in to Chubbies and sits down with Corey, Hey, Corey, how's everything going? So, I mean, you read it straight through, and this is really a process to test jokes fundamentally, you know, and to see if the episode is working, because what the writers are doing is they're listening and they're taking notes and if people don't laugh, that's that's gone. And there were things where the actor was gone too after a table read. You It didn't happen all of them, but there were times where it was like they were not just testing us but also the actor and it was like, hey, I can't wait to work with you. Jimmy, where's Jimmy. Jimmy's gone. Jimmy had two jokes and somehow missed three of them, so he's gone. It's really it's a constantly evolved like throughout the week, the script is being rewritten multiple times a day. We you know, after the table read, we then go into the rehearsal period, which based last the next three days where we're rehearsing on our feet with their scripts in hand, and the you know, the scripts are constantly changing, so you can't memorize anything. You know, some of us would, but as we got better, I feel like we did start memorizing it almost immediately, like your brain clicked into this zone. But for the most part we'd be on stage and and and it would just be the actors, the director, a script supervisor. Who else would be there, like maybe props, the teacher, A very small group of us would be going through the scenes and putting it on its feet. And we would do that the first day, get new scripts that night. It was a very light rehearsal because Mike Will said there was almost always a full script rewrite immediately after table read, and so they were rewriting on Friday, which lets the director and the actors know, don't memorize too much of this, don't put it on its feet too much, because whole things may change. Sets may you may not be no longer in the classroom, You're going to be in the living room, like a lot of things can change. So you do like a really fast light rehearsal on Friday, and then you come in ready to go on Monday for a full Monday rehearsal and then run through that night for the producers and writers. The network run through is not until the next day. Now I didn't even know what to run through. Was nobody. Nobody prepared me for any of this. So when they're like, hey, are you ready for the run through? I had no idea what that meant. So what is a run through? Will explain that. So a run through is you do the entire show from beginning to end. You're holding the scripts because you don't you haven't memorized the lines by this point. Costumes, nomes, no props, no cameras. You're just running it through like a play, from beginning to end. There's a bank of director's chairs set up in front of whatever. You know, say you're in the classroom scene, there's a bank of director's chairs. All the producers and directors sit there, which is basically where the fourth wall should be, because everything camera, where the cameras would be, there's just a bank of chairs. And then we run, we go through it, and we'd blinds and we'd miss jokes and we you know, then you literally you would get up and walk to the next area where there be more chairs set up, and you'd continue the show and you'd run it from beginning to end. Uh. And I did not know that was happening. And then I also did not know that was followed, especially on a Michael Jacobs set, by the note session, the notes. Someone talk about the note session please, because I'm getting adjective just thinking. So typically after a run through the everybody gathers in one of the sets. Everyone sits down, all the actors and one side, and all the writers on the other side, and the executive producer and or the director, but mostly the executive producer gives feedback on what just happened on the run through. And this feedback session, I think on most shows probably is like twenty minutes, which is like, hey, this joke didn't work, and they give notes to the actors if they have any like hey, could you try it this way? Try it that way. With Michael Jacobs, who was the creator of Boymate's World, um, he's kind of he was really into the notes sessions. We would have one to two hour long notes sessions and he would open up a script and say, all right, page one line one, page one line one, page one line one and uh the memory I can hear his pages turning, snap snap snap. Yeah. Michael took notes sessions to a performance art. It was really just about him giving you know. He would he would most often talk to the actors. He wouldn't talk so much about the script at that stage. As the show went on, it became more of an open process, I feel like where he would admit, like, oh, we gotta fix this whole scene or this whole thing. But for the most part it was a chance for him to try and explain to us, like what they were aiming for and where we missed the markets actors or what was going wrong, um, And and then they would go off after the two hour notes session. The writers would then end up writing all night, like you know, on our show as opposed to other shows, I think they would go into like two in the morning that night rewriting, and then we'd get a new script the next morning with some changes, um, and then do it all over again this time and the core p a farrier person would drop off the scripts at whatever time they finished writing them, so that we had them for the drive to work the next morning. We didn't have to wait till we have to say so much paper. But also like like a four am do covered script would just be on the porch sometimes because the sprinklers had gone on in the morning or whatever and it had just been delivered and there are eleven cast members that lived all over Los Angeles. It's not like Danielle and I right now where we live thirty seconds from each other. It was somebody driving all over l A. And apparently they were you know, it wasn't just for us. It was the thing that we didn't realize is that every change they make effects wardrobe, every change they make effects set to, every depiction head gets a script. Everybody got a script. So they were delivering arguably fifty seventy five scripts a night. Um, you know, all over Los Angeles at three o'clock in the morning. These poor p a s for no money and I mean just to be part of the industry, and they're the unsung heroes of the show. But it was, it was the whole experience was was insane. And then and then we get to so that was Monday, and that was studio run. That was we should also insert. Meanwhile, for those of us children who were in school, we have to do by California state law, three hours of school a day. So what sounds like nothing, no, but it's actually a lot when you're one on one with a teacher. In our case, we had we had two teachers. Ultimately the show, and we first started we only had one, but ultimately we ended up having two teachers who they are basically our personal tutors because all of us are in different grades. Ben and I was one grade older than Ben, and Danielle you were even a grade younger than Ben. I think when you were in high school. I was a senior and enior high so we so you had two teachers having to navigate completely different subject matters um and we would get all of our work from our school ahead of time, and so we'd be showing up with our own textbooks, our own subjects, our own set of requirements, and these teachers would spend you know, three to four hours a day with us being like all right, right, or you're working on your English paper right now, go ahead, that's what you're doing for the next twenty minutes. Then you have Latin, and then they'd be doing Latin declensions with Ben and like, you know, it's just our classroom became, you know, this whole other level of work that we were doing. So even when you know, normally on a show you would get a break and be able to sit in your dressing your room, and I don't know the break is usually then when you're not in the scene, so the scene now doesn't involve Sean or doesn't involve air, if it doesn't involve to Pega, you would normally then go get a break. And for us, that's where we would go, get to bank, twenty or thirty minutes of school, go do twenty or thirty minutes of school. It wasn't ever three hours of school consecutively. It was twenty minutes here, forty minutes there, possibly an hour if you were so lucky. Um, and so we'd run back to our classroom and uh school as we can pass the spic craft craft service tables have good How many Twizzlers are there? Yea? There so much, so much food and nothing to get. But so much of our social life did revolve around the school classroom, you know, which is interesting because I think people always imagine us on set hanging out, which we did, but when we were on set, we were often working on the scene. Are real, downtime are real like getting to know each other, hanging out, getting to know each other's parents, who were always there. By the way, we always had to have our parents, so you you have to imagine that there's a you know, for every kid, there's a parent. Also on set, there's a studio, there's a studio teacher or two, and we would be hanging out. We would have the craft service table, which is the table that has all the snacks and coffee and tea, and then there'd be our classroom, which was a trailer the first season. It was just a trailer, had a couch and tables and like you know, we our studio teachers would put little posters on the wall and try and make it look like a classroom. But it never really felt like a classroom because I wasn't a cat with the hang in there baby, you know, like okay, but that's where our social life like really like that's where we really got to know each other, right, is like running around backstage um, and you know, and the stage itself is these huge sound stages like just these big warehouse um. And we were on the Disney lot the first year, which is which was the biggest stage by the way, in their film stage which is which is stage two, which is was not broken in half. Most of the stages were broken in half and in behalf the sides. We were in this cavernous, ridiculous stage where it was like, oh, we've got to build a giant pirate ship building on stage two. So that home improvement store. Ye. And then was thunder ali going that first season, Yes, thunder Alley with Andrew Keegan and who else was on that ed um uh he passed not to ed Asner. Oh yeah, that's right. So there was So there was this weird little community too of like our outside of our stage, there was a there was a wreck room that they had set up for all the kids of Disney. Do you remember this we where we did him. Yeah. Yeah, So we had pe which basically meant we'd go and play ping pong or football football. We did play football on asphalt by the way, which with the home improvement kids all the time, it was it was like oh wait, okay, so Jonathan Taylor Thomas is on Leon Nora, so that's not a good matchup right, I'm going to hit you in the corner. They're trying not to, you know, run into the rusty nails on the side of that thing. Wait. And then Haley Joel Osmond was on thunder Alley too, right, kid though, like he was Yeah, but it was I remember you. They brought in Nintendo six was it wasn't even sixty four at the time. It was Nintendo whenever. The second one was Superintendo, Super Nintendo. And you were a street Fighter from your Master street Fighter two street Fighter to Master and every time oh yeah, oh yeah, that's the thing. He became a joke. It was just you know what it was. It was wreck. It was like R and R, you know, like to let us out in the yard. We could do whatever we want a cigarettes and we did, but it was you try to play writer in in Street Fighter. And one could be the most frustrating thing ever still to this day, and that was Jim. That was just then go hey, I got my exercise in. Then I'd go and smoke a cigarette and go back to work. What are you smoking at the time, Yes, was smoking king sixteen year old, like kidding. By sixteen, I'd already been smoking first. And the most fun thing about that is that like none of the grown ups like stopped you or like they were like, okay, you know it, because now they down are you kidding? I? I had just celebrated that, and I'm telling I would need to tell everybody this. On the seven of May, I celebrated my eighth year without a cigarette. Please quit smoking. It's very horrible for you. But by the time I knew it was bad for me, I was hooked. So I mean I was. I was smoking heavily by fourteen, and I'd already probably started smoking at eleven. I was going to New York, I was already on television. I was, you know, it was the thing to do, and then you start doing it because it's cool, and then you're addicted to it. And where would you smoke at Disney? I remember you smoking it wrap side right outside the stage. I don't remember that area, Like I guess. I just didn't hide anything, like my pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket. And Bill Daniels every day would walk up to me and he tapped the pack of cigarettes and ego right next to your heart and walk away and just he would do that, or he would do that every day, every single day, right next to your heart. And it's like one of those things where you're like, come on, I'm sixteen, I know the world. I know everything, And you look back now and it's like, man, if you just listened, you know, of course that is the hashtag to yours. So if you're you're young and you're smoking or you're thinking thinking to smoke, so it's just not worth it. It really is not worth it. So yeah, I mean I was already I had a much different Like you talk about parents on the setting all stuff, I am from a very close knit family. It sounds like I'm not, but I'm from a very very close knit family. My parents just celebrated their fifty wedding anniversary fifty ninth wedding anniversary. Were all super close. But my parents are were two lawyers in Connecticut. My dad is still a practicing lawyer's eighty three years old. My mom ran all three of the courts in Connecticut. My dad was also a captain the Navy. They're like, if you want to go do this you we're not going to stand in your way, but we can't give up our lives to come with you. So they used to pick me up at school, drop me off at the bus in Farming Tea in Connecticut. I'd take a three hour bus ride down in New York, where my manager would pick me up most of the time. Sometimes he didn't. I was ten or eleven, I'd walk the streets in New York go to my audition, grab a slice of pizza, come back and go and go home and buy eleven or twelve. I lived in the city because I was on a show, and then I got Boy, Met World, and that was it. My first guardian was my oldest brother's fraternity brother, Spencer, who is still a good friend of mine, lives right down the street. You live in the city with my oldest brother, my oldest brother at the time, with Gary. No no no no. I live with Gary, my older brother Gary. At the time, I was eleven years old, twelve years old doing don't just sit there. So I lived in New York with Gary, who is retired from Wall Street at forty five years old, but at the time to live with me. Took a job as a janitor and was a januitor in New York so we could have an apartment, and I was on a show at Nickelodeon. I was on Nickelodeon from like twelve to fifteen, and then I got Boy at sixteen and moved out to l A. But and you were that cool guy from New York, you know. They were always when your kids, when your kid after you always auditioned for stuff, and then it always comes down to the same three people. You know, it's like because because there's the pool was very limited back then, so it was like, you know, it's always me Elijah Wood and like, uh Ben. I first met Ben because Ben and I screen tested against each other for Newsies. Do you guys remember, of course, yeah, the musical news Hees. So it was down to Luke Edwards who ended up getting it. This kid named Ben Savage who I met that day, and then me Um and we all we had we had to sing, we had to dance and act, and back then they did screen tests on thirty five millimeter on the Disney lot, so we had a full film shoot. Anyway, that's a whole another shot. But but yeah, but so but then there was always whenever they would have these auditions, like there would always be that cool guy from New York. You'd get flown in from New York and they always got the part. You'd always be like, ah, we're just the other schmucks from l A. Will always see each other. But yeah, I remember, Yeah, your life must have been so different from ours as far as being a kid actor man, because in the woods in Connecticut and it was like, you know, I would I would go back to my regular life in Connecticut, which was the best. But then I, oh, I have an audition today, I have to go shoot a commercial today. The bus would pick me up. I would go down to the bus and I would do my job whatever I had to do, and then back home to Connecticut. You know. It was That's just that's how it was. So it was much different from me. The whole l A thing was very When I finally didn't move out to Los Angeles, I didn't like it. It was very weird. I was very disconnected from everybody. You guys were so much younger than I was, and I was right in the middle. So I was either too old or too young to really hang out with anybody. Um. Luckily I met Marsden right away, and and so Jason who played Jason mars who is still still one of my best friends in the world. And um, we had a small little group of friends. But they're like, hey, man, didn't you go a party and do my I would get back to to Connecticut, my friends like, what's the club seem like? I was like, I don't know what. I don't know the racket clubs, okay, what they let me in, But I just it was not that kind of big party thing for me, and it was yeah, very okay. So we've made it to Wednesday. So Wednesday was pre tape day, and so we were finally bring We talked about Tuesday run through being for the network, then they brought up the networking. Tuesday was then the same day rehearsal day, and then we run again for network um and then Network gets to give notes to Michael, and then Michael get deliver's notes to us, and then Wednesday they bring in cameras and we shoot everything that we're not going to shoot in front of the audience. So all of the sets that take place directly in front of the audience are usually the ones that you want the audience to see. Anything that's called on a swing set that's like off to the side that you can't see, you shoot that stuff, or a scene that maybe does take place right in front of the audience but is very intricate or detailed or extremely long and it's going to take a long time and you don't have that much time in front of the audience. You shoot that on Wednesday, So that is called pre tape day. And interestingly, on our show, they started bringing in an audience for that pre tape day. Do you remember this? They figured out, Yes, they figured out that we really thrived with an audience. I mean, like all you know, good comedy shows and so what they they figured out that on Wednesdays they could bring in school buses of school kids and like make it like a field trip. So we started having really small audiences of just high schoolers or like kids on Wednesday. So we started doing our pre tape with an audience, which is really unusual. Yeah, that was something that I don't think other shows ever really did. And what you know, I might have been jumping ahead. It might not have been until third or fourth season that we started doing that, but certainly, like we we broke the sort of a calm rules by having an audience. Did we do that through the end? By see if the season seven we were bringing in an audience on Wednesday. Really I kind of remember it at the end. I kind of remember a weird but Thursday, we still pre tape stuff in the early part of the day, right we'd be pre taping, we'd be rehearsing for camera because the camera people, you have four cameras going at the same time and basically The way you you shoot a sitcom multi camera sitcom is that you're performing at like a play, and then the cameras are also constantly moving. There, these big cameras on wheels, so the camera operators have to make sure that they set up the shot for the joke or for the person that has the next line, So they're basically memorizing the script like the actors, or they're just kind of on the fly making sure that they get the shots that they need. So it's like this interesting ballet between the actors moving around the set doing the scene and the cameras where the fourth wall is also moving around and shifting and trading places. And so we would rehearse to get that of them down so that we could only do we would only have to do two or three takes in front of the audience and just really make it, give it that live sense, you know, like what I mean. And this is the form that I love. Lucy really established. They did it with three cameras. By the time they got to us, it was four cameras, um. And it's an amazing form. I mean it it's kind of old fashioned now, right, it's like gone out of style. It's but it's almost like a radio play, you know what I mean. It's like it doesn't look real like the set, you know, the way people interact, with the way people move, it's not realistic, but it's so fun. It's it's it's like sort of the last connection between television and live theater. And as an actor, it's the best because it's so much easier. Like when you do single camera shows, you have to you know, redo the same thing over and over for a million different camera angles. They have to adjust the lighting every time. In this case, you just do it two or three times and you try and make it as funny as possible. Yeah, and you know, it's also really great to what was back then a special because we there was no social media, so we didn't have direct contact with people watching the show ever unless we were out in the world after the show started airing, and every now and then people might say, hey, are you I watched that show, But otherwise our our direct contact with people who watched the show was non existent. And so getting a group of people whether or not they had ever seen the shoot the show before, we didn't know or didn't care, but we knew people were going to get to see us do it in live time, and the energy that the audience brings from the moment it's Thursday morning, we just know like, oh my gosh, I have this live, live show day energy. And you could hear them getting loaded into the audience and we're getting our hair and makeup done backstage and you know we're back. We're backstage and we're cracking jokes and I Will is making fun of everyone's wardrobe. And then ritual, a cast ritual. We had the cast screens scream because they would introduce us one by one in front of the audience to start the show. Because I have a war up MC comedian named Mitch what was Bank? Mitch Bank was our warm up. He was a comedian actor guy, and so to produce Michael's other show, and he em seed every one of our episodes from start to finish, and he um so he would warm up the audience and just talk to them, play games with them or whatever, and then he would introduce us one at a time. And so we would gather backstage behind one of the sets, usually the living room set, and we would be so nervous and excited and all the stuff that would be going into the week would just be bubbling and we would put our hands together in a circle and scream at the top of our lungs, and then we would get introduced one by one um and then they would be off to the races, getting the show that you know, I have to say exactly what Danielle was just talking about. I might miss that energy before the show of all of us standing back there, and it's exactly like Danielle said, there's there's this. It takes over all your senses. You hear the audience come in, if you feel the temperature in the building rise a bit because there's now three people in there. You hear them laughing at the warm up. But especially when the later seasons, when you knew they waited in line because they just wanted to see us. It wasn't like, hey, what's this show? It's I can't believe I get a chance to see Boy Meets World. And there was such an energy about that that you feel like you can walk on water and all the lights are down to it's all dark for the first time because the week it's all just been you know, worklights and you're just in the giant warehouse. But that night everything gets dark. It's pitch black. Backstage, you're in your wardrobe. You've got you know, it's like you've got you've got crisp new clothes on, you know your lines, You're ready to go. You're thinking about the jokes. We have such a tight like bond because we've been working on this through the week, so we've seen the evolution of the script and of our characters and of our rehearsal process, and we've complained to each other and maybe like we've definitely rooted for each other, and we've seen us get bad notes and good notes, and here it is. It's all culminating in this moment, and it's the most fun three and a half hours. You work the entire week for those three and a half hours, and they call your name and you run out, and the audience screams, and you get to see all your friends standing there waiting to get knowing they feel exactly the way you do. It's such a bond with the cast and uh and then they yell action and you're just off to the races. It's it's wonderful. It's wonderful, it really is. I miss it. So I am very very excited for this podcast because I, Um, I really want to do like this big nostalgia dive, not just two for the show, but even just for my own life. I'm excited to do this nostalgia dive and talk about what we're wearing and what the style was, and whether or not I would still wear the thing I'm wearing back then or whether I would never be caught dead in it. Um. I'm looking forward to all of that. I'm also super excited. We're going to have ton of amazing guests. We are going to have Train McGee, Betsy Randall, Rusty Russ who played Mom and Dad, Bill Daniels. Of course, the famous Mr Feeney is going to be joining us. Um, We're going to have Matt Lawrence, maitland Ward. We're also going to invite a lot of our famous guest stars. Jason Marsden, who we already mentioned, is hopefully going to come by and Okay, great, Yeah, We're gonna have a lot of a lot of great guest stars. We're also going to have writers and directors and crew if we're able to find them. Like talking about wardrobe, there are several wardrobe people I would love to have on to talk about what The inspiration behind shirts on shirts on shirts was how many? The question became how many hoods could you wear? Is three was one too many? Too many? Let's find out about focus on. I mean, hair was a big one, which is so weird because like I just remember thinking, like why do they care? And then it became a thing like our hair. You know, people cared about it, like audiences would like, you know, like my hairstyle, this butt cut middle part, what do you want to call it? I don't even know. It's like become this iconic thing that I couldn't escape. You know, I still can't escape, but uh, and like I just yeah, there's there's a lot, there's a lot lot going. It was a big Hair was a big thing. Hair was a thing on our show. Yeah, very strange. So why don't we talk about some frequently asked questions? Just to get some of these things out of the way. We know that we know you have them. We get asked them all the time. I think the number one most frequently asked question as of late is where's Corey? Just like that because they don't know his name, Because you know, we get referred to as our characters more often than not Um and we get it. You know, we were in your house every week for seven years with those names not as Danielle Writer, Ben and and Will Um. So where is Ben Savage? Ben Savage is um doing his own thing. He's doing Lifetime movies. He's busy. We would love for him to have been a part of the show. We asked him to be a part of the show. Um, we have been talking about this podcast since two thousand eighteen. Yeah, it was actually Will's idea was your idea? It was my I was the first person. We all went to a convention, because conventions when we get to meet our fans. And after one of the conventions, I was like, why don't we just do a podcast where we watch it? And it was before everybody did it now everybody. It was literally it was before office ladies. It was before rewatch podcasts or even a thing. Okay, writer was Writer's idea. I was going to take the credit to well, I'll take the credit my idea idea. And we were like, wow, that is a really good idea. We should talk about it. And then we talked about it with Ben and Ben was like, I'm not sure it's really my thing, and we said, okay, we totally understand and we'll come back to you if it ever becomes anything. And then we took a couple of meetings back in two thousand and eight talked about it. Then UM brought it up to Ben again and said, are you sure this is something we really want to do. We think it could be really great and he said, it just really is not my thing and we have respected that, and UM, it's not his thing. So that is why Ben is not here. UM, and let's see other frequently asked questions. Uh, we always get asked what our favorite episode is that? Yes, which, and it's always the same thing. We always say it's we call it the screen episode, the screen episode, but it was called and then there was Sean, which was the Halloween episode. I think there are a bit more answers to that question, though, because depends on what you mean. That is my favorite episode because of the memory of making it. But if you ask me what the quality of the episode is, I think there are other answers. And I'm so curious because I only have memories. I don't know, you know, watching it, there's going to be a new answer, basically, like going to discover oh, that is like a solid episode, you know, in terms of objectively speaking, not just your memories of it. To your point, the Scream episode is my favorite episode for the memory of making it as an ensemble. I have other favorite memories of like favorite episodes, especially from season one that just we're really salient to me as a little girl making the show like will. One of my favorite episodes is the episode where out of nowhere randomly to Panga has a crush on Eric and Eric that was a great episode. No recollection of thatch a good episode. Grab your face, you come in to kiss me, to kiss you, kiss me, you palm, and I can remember what your palm smelled like, Like I right, for someone who has no memories at all, I remember, and I think it was because it was super awkward. It was award you know, you were sixteen and I was twelve at that time and you were twelve. Yeah, and I and it was it was just awkward and weird, and I remember, but I remember you being so like Obviously, I haven't even been on stage for very long. This was maybe even only my third, maybe my fourth episode ever. Um, but you were so easy to be around. We had such a good time. And then as we know, to Panga and Eric were practically never we never really had scenes were reinteracted like that episode is one of my favorites for that reason, So yes, I remember that episode. Is hard to pin down because we have favorites for so many different reasons. And it will change. I think writer's right when we watch it will change for exactly that reason, like oh that one was special to me or this one, and then yeah, they will get into the whole thing because they then went weird with with Eric and to Pango where then it was like we ended up in bed together at one point, and do you remember do you remember this where I'm like, I need a roommate, so you'd get it, you like get ready for bed and you slide into bed and then I'm over there. I'm in bed like hey, roomy because that's not creepy at all. I'm just be with you. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they would. They did stuff like that too, where it was just like, oh, that's really weird. I'm just gonna get in bed with my brother's girlfriend, like really bizarre stuff. So yeah, that was will unpack all as we keep saying, we'll unpack all this as we go, we'll unpack that for sure. Um. Any other frequently asked questions we want to touch on here? Phoene call? Yes, why don't you do the Phoene call anyway? Is the question? Um, why don't you do? There's a number of reasons I don't do the Phoene call. Um, there there really are, and one of them is so, if I'm being totally honest, I was upset with the way the Phoene call was taken from me, which is the absolute truth. So when we start, when they started Girl Meets World, Michael without and again I'm not trying to bash Michael in any way, shape or form, but without any apologized to me for this, frankly, Um, without calling me, without letting me know, without doing anything. He just popped in a tape of the Phoene Call to the to Rowan and Sabrina and said, you guys are now doing this. You're both doing this when you meet Mr Phoenie. Uh. Other than it's saying Phoenie with an exclamation point in the script, the Phoenie call was mine, like I created that out of whole cloth. It was just I just made that my own. So I thought without even being asked to then take it and give it away. Um, I didn't think was very cool. Uh So Michael apologized to me. He's like, you're right, that was And I told him that. I was like, that's you know, that wasn't cool. He's like, I didn't even he he said, look, I honestly didn't even think about it that way. You're right I should have. Let's do some kind of passing of the torch. And I went in front of the audience at Girl Meets World, I did it one more time and I said I passed it on to the girls. And I got that because and this is a true story, I was doing a cartoon called ThunderCats, which was one of my favorite cartoons ever growing up, and I got a chance to play lion O and the original lion O actor Larry Kenny, played my dad on the show. And he was at a convention and he's he actually sent me the clip and I thought this was really cool where somebody said, can you do the famous lion lion ThunderCats hoe and he said, I will do it one more time for you. But then it's Wills and I am officially packed passing the torch and I thought that was cool. He says he's never done it since. He knows he has, but he says he's never done it since. Um so I took that coupled with kind of like you know, that was mine and you gave it away, And I liked this passing the torch thing, and I have haven't done it since. It's also interesting. I mean, I know you've talked about to me, you've talked, you've expressed this before. You didn't even realize you had a catchphrase. It was it was It was one of those funny bits. We did a lot of bits on the show. Like you remember in the first season, Ben kept saying like I'm super boy or something. You did that, and they like they try these things out and give us like catch phrases or repetitive jokes, and like the Phoene Call was just one of the many, like your your character has so many. So it's really only in retrospect that it became like a defining characteristic of the show. Yeah, it also wasn't even named the Phoene Call until the last episode. The very last episode, Eric says to to Phoenie, you know, come on, be honest, you love the Phoene call. You're gonna miss the Phoene call. That's the first time that was ever said. So it wasn't even a It was just it would say Mr Feenie, and I would then make it nine minutes long. I mean that was all that it was. It wasn't like the Phoene call. Um. So, yeah, I had no idea that I had. I had my own. Did I do that? I didn't know that. It's like I didn't. I didn't know that. So yeah, so interesting. That's that. That's the story behind the Phoenie call. Are there any other what are the frequently asked question? Because we do we always get the same frequently asked kind And I'll be honest, I had a document with them written down, and I don't know where the document is. So that's a frequently asked question for Danielle is where did you put that? Where? I got him? I got him, I got him? Are you still friends? I think that that much is obvious. You don't even need to answer that. Oh did you actually cut your hair? O? Good one. I sure did, with real scissors and everything. We can't talk to me. We'll talk about that when that episode comes around. Um, that's another week that I do have very um strong memories, mostly of people yelling off stage on the night it was going to happen. Um. It was such a the amount of stress. Again, the importance placed on hair in this show is weird, um, but there was so much stress around the cutting of the hair because you only get really one good take at it. You get one good this before, and once that's cut, you can't go back to Danielle has super long hair, certainly not quick um. And it was Mike. I remember the negotiation with Michael show me where, show me where You're getting no because he did not want me to cut my hair short. And you also have to This was the first time you would ever cut your hair in life. In life, I had I had a trim when I was three years old because from the time I was too my hair reached my butt. And when I turned three, I had these little ringlet at the bottom of my hair, and my mom decided I needed a trim and she basically just cut the ringlets off and that was the last time I ever cut my hair. So I was either fifteen or sixteen years old. Other than little trims, you know, I would get little little like I'm talking half an inch off the bottom of my hair. Otherwise I had that super long hair my entire life. And yes, I got to be fifteen, sixteen years old. I think I was fifteen, and I just wanted to cut my hair. And I asked Michael over a summer break, so our again, our schedule, we usually started our seasons in August and then we would shoot for three weeks, take a week off, shoot for three weeks, take a week off, and then during holidays we get two weeks off and we would shoot then straight until May, and then May would start our summer break and we would go on summer break from middle of May until August. And somewhere in that summer I called Michael and said, you know, I want to cut my hair. I guess I just knew that. I wasn't that I couldn't just cut it, but like it was like in my can tracked. I don't know, I I knew better than to just do it. And I said, I want to cut my hair. Are you okay with that? And he said no, absolutely not, no oh no, no, no, no no, And then it was like, please, I've never cut it. I'm really tight hot and I've never done it. I just I want something new, And he said okay, but then you have to let me, let me at least write an episode about it. And I said okay. So I had to wait until the episode came around. Um, so yes, I really did cut my hair. Uh, and I can't wait to talk about it when that episode gets around. That's that's going to be really fun. You just said something really interesting because it just had me flashback on something to you instantly snapped to this place of I can't do anything with my body or looks without permission, asking permission, even when it was never really specifically said to. But I remember asking if I could get a tattoo, asking if I could cut my hair, asking if I It's like, we just knew we're not allowed to do any of this with it. Writer, weren't Wasn't there something where you weren't allowed to roller blade? After a while, No, I I went bungee jumping and skydiving. Remember the director that we've just been like, don't, don't, don't, don't tell the producers, don't don't tell them you're doing this stuff. I did that with helicopter lessons, where you can't we can't let you fly, And I was like, I don't think they ever told me to not rollerblade, but that makes such a great ninth story that maybe the story I heard frequently asked questions. The story I heard was that you were rollerblading at uh the oak Woid where we all lived, and somebody broke their leg. It wasn't you, but somebody broke their leg. Your mom my mom broke because that was the four boy meats world. That was because I was gonna say, I thought then the story I heard as they heard about that, they were like, no more rollerblading, Like that's it, You're done. Wait did you both live at Oakwood when you first when the show first season of the show, we both lived at Oakwood's. I was in the Z building and I was okay, then that was the year I was in qu Okay because we were pretty far away if I remember the buildings that Okay, So just for everybody in the oak Wod apartments of these legendary month to month furnished apartments that all actors, especially child actors, would live in because you can move and their families you can move in for one month at a time, and it would have all the furniture, and so everybody would come for pilot season or to make a movie or to do one show, and so yeah, so we would live there with our you know, you live with your roommate, Spencer. I lived with my brother who was on a TV show at the same time that we were doing Boy Met the World. He was on The Mommy's We both had TV shows going at the same starting at the same time, and so my mom would be shuttling us from both sets. But we all lived at the oak Woods, which is this just this hilly apartment complex in Burbank and it's all paved, so it was rollerblading heaven. I mean it was also like summer camp for me, Like we would go for pilot season and you need all these child actors who would be coming from all over the country, and you'd all just hang out at the pool and the hot blade together. We'll have so many oak with child child actors and divorced men. That's the people that lived at the oak Wand for the record, I did not live at the oak Wood because I'm a native Native Southern Californian, So I lived with my family. We lived in calabasas Um I just because Yeah, you kept saying we all lived there, and I was like, Oh, they're going to think we all went the same complex. I have one more frequently asked question which I think would be a good one to go out on, and we have to keep it kind of brief because we go, but what are you guys doing now? A podcast? That's a real question, John, I know this is the where are they now questioned? A little bio of we're what we've been up to? Okay from Since two thousand seventeen, I have been a full time sitcom TV director UM, which is just a continuation of what we're talking about here. It's something that I didn't know I ever wanted to do. I got the opportunity to do it for the first time on Girl Mead's World, Uh, fell in love with it and have been very fortunate to be able to make a career of it. UM. So I've been doing that full time. I also my husband Jensen and I have a production company. We have a couple of shows UM in early stages of production. We have a pilot out and a few their things UM. And then I also have a hair care company, which I am extremely proud of. And it is a very small team. There are four of us total in the entire company, from development to being delivered on your doorstep. We're involved in every single aspect of it. UM. It's called Be Free by Daniel Fishel and uh. I love it and I'm super proud of it. And then I also have two children, which, although that is a personal life thing, it's also a job. Yeah you go, writer, Yeah, I am also a father. Right now, I am full time solo parenting well of my wife, who is an actor's producer, director writer, is off producing a feature film in New York at the moment, so this I am on a month. I'm about eight weeks into solo parenting while she's gone. So my main job right now is raising in our seven year old and making sure, you know, he gets the school and his shoelaces are tied, which is lovely and awesome. I also run a I do in my own podcast, which is called Literary Disco. I am a huge book nerd, which you guys will remember from way back. I always have been so literary discos. So I've been doing that for like ten years, podcasting about books UM. And we're relaunching a new season of that I'm by. My main job is writer, writer, director. I directed a lot of The Girl Meets World episodes and really loved it. I've made a bunch of short films and but mostly I've made a living for the last twelve years as a screenwriter. Uh you know. And of course the life of a screenwriter is you write movies and then they never actually get made. Um. But I've been paid and I've been doing you know, I've I've enjoyed it. But I'm ready to write and direct an actual movie movie on my own, a feature. I love it, um. I you know. I stopped acting probably ten years ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. As much as I love actors and I love the industry, I really like being within it, but on the other side of the camera. So directing is my dream job. It's a very hard job to get. So writing is what I do all the time. Are you writing anything with anyone you know? Right now? Actually, one of my like one of my many projects is with the incredibly talented wilfordl We're ready to feature script right now. Um yeah, And it's probably the best thing I'm working on right now. I'm really excited about it. Um. Yeah, we're very excited. UM. I left the industry at the on camera side of the industry as well due to an anxiety disorder, which I've talked about a lot of times. I will be getting back on camera eventually. I'm slowly but surely getting there. But my love and passion since I was nineteen twenty years old has been voiceover voiceover industry. UM. I've written for a number of the animated series that I do, and it is still the joy of my life to be a voiceover actor. I have a movie that just came out last week called DC Superhero Girls and Teen Titans Mayhem in the Multiverse. I have two new series coming out which I'm not allowed to talk about right as of yet, but they're very very cool. And I also do a podcast about the entertainment industry about the voiceover industry called I Hear Voices with Christy Carlson, Roma Know who. I did a show called Kim Possible with and Uh. We do a show where not only do we interview all of the best voiceover actors in the world, but amateur voiceover actors get to come on and actually do a voiceover session. With those voiceover actors, and then we're gonna take all that stuff and animated, so people get to be in their own cartoon. It is very fun. It's called I hear voices. Check it out. But that has been my life. And then I do a bunch of conventions, hopefully a lot of them. With these people here who I love like family. We do do something together which is pretty amazing. And I get to travel the world with my wife and uh just meet fans and it's absolutely wonderful. So that's what I've been doing. I have one final question for all of us, what is the what's the best thing you can hope for coming out of this podcast and rewatching Boy meets World and what is the thing you're the most nervous or scared of? Like high point, low point? What's the best and worst of what we're about to and indulge ourselves in. Wow, good question. Do you have anything off the top of your head? Writer? I don't know, I mean, I have you know. I was I was at a wedding like a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago as a friend's wedding, and um, I met an actress comedian who was there you know, it was one of those three day weddings. So this is like day three when we were actually at the wedding and sitting down and she was like, hey, you know I grew up on on your show. Um, and you know you're really cool, like you seem like really healthy and like really cool. What how do you relate to that show now? Like what do you what do you? How do you feel about it? And it was like the most for the first time, I was like I have such a long answer. Uh. And you know, I say for the first time because I think that for every other stage in my life I had really pat easy answers. You know, it was I'm so lucky to be on the TV show, or then it was like, oh no, I'm just a student now I don't want to talk about that, or and you know, I just felt such a mature question like here I am early forties with another actor in their forties asking me a very honest question like what was that? And and I realized I could talk for probably an hour and a half if I let myself. And so I think that that's what this show is for me personally, like is trying to come to terms with the with what Boy Meets World means because it had such a cultural impact outside of my control. When you're a kid actor, like we were saying about our hair and what not, so many things are outside of your control, and as positive as that can be, because like, hey, I made enough money to be able to send myself through college, you know, like my parents didn't have to pay for that. Um, I've been able to have this great life as access point to the writing career that I now have. So there's so many positive things that came from Boy Meets World. There's also a lot of negative memories I have of of of how it affected my life and and for a long time I wanted to be anything but Seawan Hunter from Boy Meets World. I spent most of my twenties running away from it. And now I'm at a place where I think I can kind of be mature enough to see see it from both sides and to talk that out. So I don't have an easy answer, but I think that that's why we should do this podcast is because I think it's it's a it's a really complicated question and has a really complicated answer. Yeah, I don't. I think that's that's kind of where I would go. I mean, the the high point for me is doing it with both of you. Um, the being able to do something that Again, I watched the first episode and I genuinely had a huge spike of anxiety pressing play before I hit the first episode of the show. And one of the things that helps me and always has helped me, is being around people that I love and I trust and knowing that I'm with the both of you and going on this journey where we can talk about all this stuff together and you're talking about it with people that went through the same thing. You know, you're you're you're in the trenches together, and while our experiences might have differed, we can come at it from the same place, which is something that I'm very much looking forward to. What scares me is pulling back the curtain to realize that the great and powerful Laws is just a man. Uh. That's what scares me is that these memories that I have that are so wonderful for me, uh and so incredible that really, when I do look at them as an adult, I might look back and maybe they're not as great as I remember them being. Um, which again I don't know Frankly and I and there there's it's gonna bring up a lot of a lot of different emotions all the way through, and their emotions that I want to We keep using the word unpacked, that I want to unpack. I'm glad I'm doing it with the both of you. But that's what scares me the most is I I have maybe put the show and my experiences on the show on a little bit of a pedestal, and I'm making sure that the pedestal is marble and not feather. And when I look back, I'm hoping it's as I remember. And that's I think what scares me the most is is, you know, again getting having some of the guest cast come back on, and having other people we worked with come back on and maybe their experiences weren't that great and and it's those kind of things that's gonna make me re look at my own past from a different perspective of and I think I need to Frankly, I mean, nobody's life is perfect. I don't care how amazing you think your experience was. It was still just an experience that had highs and lows. And Uh, it's going to be interesting to go back. So that's again a long winded, a long winded answer that got us nowhere, But that's exactly kind of how I feel. It's those are those exactly why I asked I am. I am very much looking forward to going through this with you guys. It says it is, for lack of the better term, it's it's a safe space. It feels safe to go through this with you guys. Um, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm hoping, like I said, that it will bring back some memories for me, because I do have very fond memories of most of the time on Boy Meets World, and I'd like to have more of them. Um, every time you guys remind me of stuff or say things and I'm like, no, I don't remember that, I start to like, I think, and I think and I think. Like when writer mentioned some of the small audience on Wednesdays, I was like, I do kind of remember that. Towards the end, like, oh, that's interesting. So I'm excited to say what it brings up. Like I said, I'm excited for the nostalgia dive. I will be perfectly honest and say that my the thing that makes me the most nervous is I know how beloved this show is to so many people, and we meet them, We meet fans at cons and they tell us these very personal stories about what the show meant, and that always means so much to us. We walk away from those conventions and we say, I am so glad I met everybody that I met this weekend and I heard their stories. And I want to watch the show and be very honest in the podcast about the feelings it brings up for me, the thoughts I have about a scene or a storyline or the acting, whether it's my own or you know whatever. I want to be able to be very honest about it. And my what makes me the most nervous is possibly ruining something that some maybe even just one memory for somebody that they that they love. Um and so that makes me nervous. But I'm gonna be I'm gonna just have to be very honest about how I feel, and hopefully it's it's mostly you know, rosie and fun and wonderful, the way it is in my memory. But uh I, I just want us to be as honest as possible as we go through this, because I think that's gonna be what's best for everyone. Yeah, I think so too. That's good. That was a great answer. I want to take that one. So next week we're jumping in. We are rewatching the pilot, starting in with episode number one oh one. The pilot it was called um and So yeah, next week, big, big week. I can't wait to jump in and uh, listen, writer, I think our first week since this podcast was your idea. You have the honors of our tagline, we love you all. Pod dismissed Pod Meets World as an I heart podcast produced and hosted by Daniel Fishel Wilfredel and writer Strong. Executive producers Jensen Carp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Tara Sudbach, producer, Lorraine Verruez, engineer and Boy Meets World super fan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Pod Meets World Show or email us at Pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com.