William Daniels shared photos of an impromptu Boy Meets World cast reunion on Saturday, June 1.
The actor, better known by many as his BMW character Mr. Feeny, shared shots of an apparent party via X. In the photos, Daniels smiled alongside his wife, Bonnie Bartlett, and former costars Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle.
“Just a little reunion with my favorite students!!” he captioned the photos.
It’s far from the first time these actors have gotten together since ABC’s Boy Meets World wrapped in 2000 after seven seasons. Fishel, Strong and Friedle cohost a rewatch podcast of the sitcom called “Pod Meets World,” a project they began in 2022.
Daniels, 97, appeared on an early episode of the pod, where he revealed to the trio of hosts that he nearly walked away from one of his most iconic roles. He said that he had to be reassured by Boy Meets World showrunner Michael Jacobs that the character of Mr. Feeny would be treated with respect.
“I said ‘Well, that’s a funny name and I don’t want to make fun of teachers. I respect them and they’re unpaid and all that,’” Daniels recalled on the July 2022 episode. “Then [Jacobs] told me what my role was based on, which was a mentor of his when he was in high school… I was afraid [Feeny] would be the butt of the joke [but then] I realized the plot would be written with respect.”
Boy Meets World lead Ben Savage was notably absent from the photos shared by Daniels. That, too, is nothing new. Friedle, 47, shared in 2023 that Savage suddenly stopped speaking to him several years prior.
“He disappeared — I wish I knew why, to this day,” Friedle told Variety. “We didn’t have a fight. There’s no falling out. There was no animosity. He just woke up one day, and decided ‘I don’t want this person in my life anymore.’”
Friedle said he called Savage, 43, repeatedly, refusing to be iced out by someone he had known since he was 11 years old. He shared, “I tried and tried and tried for months, until finally my wife was like, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself? He obviously doesn’t want you in his life.’”
Even so, the cast has been hesitant to speak ill of Savage. When Fishel praised her castmates during a large panel of former Boy Meets World stars at a ‘90s convention in Tampa last year, some saw it as a dig at Savage, the notably absent cast member. Fishel, 43, set the record straight via her Instagram Story.
“Nice clickbait but I wasn’t speaking about anyone who wasn’t on that stage with me,” she wrote. “It was a love letter to them and not a passive aggressive attack on anyone else. Do better pls.”
