Boy Meets World’s Will Friedle Talks How ‘Unbelievable’ It Is The TGIF Series Still Resonates With Fans After Nearly 30 Years

Will Friedle as Eric Matthews in Boy Meets World
(Image credit: ABC)

Although Will Friedle is an accomplished voice actor whose many credits include Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond (who he suspects he’ll reprise someday), Ron Stoppable in Kim Possible and the Jaime Reyes version of Blue Beetle in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, arguably his most well-known live-action role remains Eric Matthews in Boy Meets World. The sitcom from ABC’s TGIF block premiered in 1993, and nearly 30 years later, not only is it still beloved many of the original fans, plenty of younger viewers are still discovering it. The fact that Boy Meets World continues to resonate with so many people after all this time is something that Friedle sees as “unbelievable,” as he put it to CinemaBlend.

I had the chance to speak with Will Friedle about voicing Lex Luthor and Aquaman in the upcoming animated DC movie Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse, but before our conversation wrapped up, I asked how he felt about Boy Meets World still being so popular after all this time thanks to the show being available to stream with a Disney+ subscription, as well younger people being led to it thanks to the Girl Meets World spinoff that aired on Disney Channel. Friedle informed me that he’d discussed that same topic the day prior with some fellow Boy Meets World actors, revealing:

It’s unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. I was actually at lunch yesterday with Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong, and we were talking about this exact thing, how it’s still going and people still love it and it still holds up. And we’re so honored that we were able to be a part of something that really, truly mattered to people. Yeah, it’s amazing. And again, they’re two of my closest friends in the world, so to be able to walk away not only done something you’re proud of, but with people that have helped to shape who you are, that’s a pretty rare gift.

Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong starred in Boy Meets World as Topanga Lawrence and Shawn Hunter, respectively, and they comprised the core quartet of the show’s younger cast of characters alongside Will Friedle’s Eric Matthews and his brother Cory, played by Ben Savage. For Friedle, it’s not just a big deal for him that Boy Meets World, which wrapped up in 2000 with the two-part finale “Brave New World,” remains a beloved show among people across a wide age spectrum. He’s also appreciative of how being part of the show led him to forging close friendships that are still going more than two decades after he finished regularly working with Fishel, Strong and the rest of the Boy Meets World cast. You can’t put a price on those kinds of relationships. 

Boy Meets World followed two years after Will Friedle finished co-hosting the Nickelodeon comedy talk show Don’t Just Sit There!, which ran for three seasons. Eric Matthews started off in the stereotypical older brother role to Cory and their sister Morgan (played by Lily Nicksay in the first two seasons and Lindsay Ridgeway in the others), and was also popular in school and naturally intelligent, but didn’t apply himself academically. However, in Boy Meets World’s later seasons, Eric morphed into an unhinged and wackier character who became one of the show’s main sources of comedic hijinks. Friedle later reprised Eric for four episodes of Girl Meets World, where fans learned he’d become mayor of St. Upidtown at some point after Boy Meets World, and in the spinoff’s episode “Girl Meets Mr. Squirrels Goes to Washington,” he was elected as the new Senator from New York.

Since Girl Meets World was canceled in 2017 after just three seasons, it’s hard to say if we’ll ever see Will Friedle plays Eric Matthews again. But even if it never happens, the actor is not just pleased with Boy Meets World’s enduring popularity, but also with how the show benefitted his personal life. Now that you’re Boy Meets World-frame of mind after reading this, be sure to check out what Friedle said at ‘90s Con about how the show originally planned to use Topanga.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.