- Danielle Fishel speaks about being objectified and harassed as a teenager in the entertainment industry.
- Fishel mentions a disturbing interaction with a male TV executive while she was starring in Boy Meets World.
- The actress shares that it took her until her late 30s to understand and set boundaries for herself.
Danielle Fishel, known for her role in Boy Meets World and its revival, Girl Meets World, has opened up about her experiences with uncomfortable attention and harassment as a young actress. She shared her thoughts on a recent episode of her podcast, Pod Meets World, which she co-hosts with former Boy Meets World costars Rider Strong and Will Friedle.
Fishel recounted becoming “an object of desire at such a young age” and shared a story about a horrible experience she had with an adult TV executive while working on the ABC sitcom. “I had people tell me they had my 18th birthday [circled] on their calendar,” said Fishel. “I had a male executive — I did a calendar [shoot] at 16 — and he specifically told me he had a certain calendar month in his bedroom.”
While Fishel felt mature for her age, she now recognizes that the interaction was inappropriate. At the time, she initially felt uncomfortable but then rationalized it as a normal interaction between peers. She stated, “I should not have been outwardly talked about at 14, 15, 16 years old. And I was, even directly to me.”
Fishel continues, “As a kid, I always wanted to be older. I always wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be seen as an adult. So getting adult male attention as a teenage girl — I didn’t think of it as being creepy or weird. I felt like it was validation that I was mature and I was an adult and I was capable and that they were seeing me the way I was, not for the number on a page. And in hindsight, that is absolutely wrong.”
It wasn’t until her late 30s that Fishel began to process the impact of this type of attention and realize that she was “bad at boundaries.” She had no expectations regarding how others should treat her and did not want anyone to think she was “better than them.” Fishel attributes her journey to understanding and establishing boundaries to her time on the Girl Meets World series, noting that it took 37 years for her to do so.