Danielle Fishel said the "Boy Meets World " cast has grown "so much closer" because they have hard conversations.- Fishel and her "
Pod Meets World " cohosts told Insider they won't shy away from important issues.
"Boy Meets World" star Danielle Fishel told Insider in a recent interview that the cast of the hit
In January 2020, McGee tweeted about the racism she experienced on set from 1997 to 2000 when she played Shawn Hunter's (Rider Strong) love interest Angela Moore. The behavior was similar in 2015 when McGee returned for the spinoff "Girl Meets World."
The actor tweeted that she was "called aunt Jemima" and a "bitter bitch" and treated "like a stranger" on set, even though she appeared on nearly 60 episodes of the original series. At the time, McGee didn't specify who on set called her racist names.
—Trina McGee (@realtrinamcgee) January 12, 2020
She later opened up to Yahoo Entertainment in July 2020 about why she was now confronting the racism she'd experienced.
"I feel like I'm always the one who had to squelch it and move on," McGee told Yahoo
McGee said her feelings were resurfacing in 2020 because she felt similarly uncomfortable on the "Girl Meets World" set several years before.
She revealed that it was Friedle who had called her the racist name and said that she had since received an apology from him that was "completely sincere."
In June 2020, Fishel tweeted that she was the person who made McGee feel unwelcome on the spinoff set. "I owed @realtrinamcgee an apology for being rude, cold, & distant when she guest starred on GMW (her tweet regarding warm hellos being met with cold blank stares was about me)." She said she apologized and McGee "gracefully" accepted.
—Danielle Fishel Karp (@daniellefishel) June 7, 2020
The 'Pod Meets World' cast told Insider they're ready to talk about their mistakes
In a joint interview with Friedle and Strong promoting their "Boy Meets World" rewatch
"Social media has actually made us worse communicators and there's already a tendency for some people to shy away from confrontation," she said. Fishel knows that some people "embrace" tense encounters but she thinks the "default" is to avoid them.
"With that said, if something happens that one person isn't aware is a big deal — because to them it was a flippant comment or a moment that felt rushed through — and you don't know how much of an impact it made on someone else, you'll never know it unless they come to you and say, 'I need to talk to you about what happened," Fishel continued
She said that accepting their "less than stellar" moments is how people grow.
So, although McGee has publicly healed her relationships with both Fishel and Friedle, the cohosts have made it clear on the podcast that they will be revisiting the issue when McGee joins them as a guest on an upcoming episode.
"It has made us so much closer, the things that have come out of those conversations, the tears that have been shed, the hugs that we've had, the closeness it has brought us, has been some of my favorite moments of the last several years," Fishel said of the difficult talks she's had with McGee and other cast members.
Friedle told Insider that the "Boy Meets World" cast is "a family," so some confrontation is inevitable and he's "looking forward" to discussing important topics publicly with McGee and other members of the cast.
"When you can all get together and look back at that and talk about it as adults, that's how you grow," he said. "One of the few things that I'm so happy about is how close we are to everybody now."
New episodes of "Pod Meets World" are released on Mondays.