- Boy Meets World stars Rider Strong, Will Friedle, and Danielle Fishel discuss their friendship with guest star Brian Peck on their podcast.
- Peck’s involvement in a legal case for inappropriate behavior towards a child prompted the cast to reflect on their past interactions with him.
- The cast members express regret for supporting Peck and emphasize the importance of understanding boundaries between adults and children.
Rider Strong, Will Friedle, and Danielle Fishel talked about their experiences with someone named Brian Peck on their podcast episode that aired on February 19. Peck was a guest star on Boy Meets World and later got into trouble for doing bad things to kids. They had him on their show twice during season 5. Friedle and Strong thought of Peck as a friend, and they used to hang out with him a lot.
Friedle shared that he didn’t go to many parties, but he spent a lot of time with Peck after Boy Meets World ended. He thought Peck was a cool guy who was funny and good at his job. Strong also used to hang out with Peck often, even though they were 20 years apart in age.
Fishel said that many adults on the Boy Meets World set didn’t question Peck’s relationship with the younger cast members because they were afraid of seeming homophobic. They didn’t realize it was more about boundaries between adults and kids than anything else.
In 2003, Peck got into serious trouble for doing inappropriate things with a child. Friedle said Peck tried to blame the victim instead of taking responsibility for his actions. Strong mentioned that they didn’t know the full story back then because they couldn’t just search online like we can now. They only knew a little about what Peck was accused of.
Friedle and Strong even wrote letters to the judge to support Peck and went to court for his sentencing. But when they were there, they realized they were on the wrong side of things. The victim’s mother looked at them and said something that made Friedle feel terrible. He couldn’t believe he was there supporting someone who had hurt a kid.
Friedle said he still feels awful about it and can’t find the right words to express how he feels inside.
The podcast episode was a departure from their usual format of talking about Boy Meets World episodes. They felt they needed to address Peck’s story because his episodes were coming up, and there’s a docuseries about past abuse on Nickelodeon sets that will talk about him too. They wanted to make sure their listeners knew the truth about Peck’s actions and how they felt about it.
