Boy Meets Will Friedle!!

Former Nickelodeon kid Will Friedle talks to us about the days BEFORE he became Eric on the massive hit "Boy Meets World"...from commuting to the city at age 11, to moving to Hollywood as a teen, to his massive crush on Christine Taylor! He also talks about why he thought he was going to be fired from Boy Meets World, how his anxiety almost cost him his career, and how his mentor William Daniels (aka Mr. Feeny) helped him through it all.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey Dude the Nineties called with Christine Taylor and David Lasher. Hey, everybody,
welcome back to Hey Dude the nineties called This is
our podcast, and I'm Christine.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm David.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Hi, David, Hi, Hi, welcome back. Nice to see you
you too.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm still smiling from last week.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Oh my gosh, I know. My brother sent me a text.
He goes, I have such a man crush on Graham.
He's made every single show and movie he's ever made
are like my favorites, and the way he talks about
Hey dude and Dave. He just thought it was such
an awesome episode. I haven't listened back yet. I'm way
behind on my listen backs. Do you listen in real time?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I did listen to last week's, like yesterday, and it
was amazing. I mean, yeah, I just hope the audience
enjoyed it. And you know, Graham and Dave are just
two of the most fascinating talented people.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah. That was so cool, So cool. All right. I
have a very funny thing before we bring our And
it's not that I say very funny. It's not that funny.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Don't set it off. The thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It's a silly thing. I got a Christmas gift that
was a I got a double of a gift that
I realized my son had gotten me for my birthday
that I hadn't brought out to this podcast yet. And
it is a little deck of cards called Totally Nineties
Trivia one hundred pop culture Questions. So Quinn got this

(01:33):
for me like in the summertime. Then Ella got it
for me for Christmas, and I realized I hadn't. I
hadn't opened up Quinn's gift yet. It's been sitting here that.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I have a great idea. It's so cute. But why
don't we open one of those cards at the end
of every show and have people post on our social
media the answer?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, well, yes, I was. Do you want me to
give you one first and then I'll give an answer?
And I looked through. Some of them are very easy,
but some are summer tricks. Okay, I'm going to see,
all right, I'm going to give you this one right now.
You can answer it here and then and then is this.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
For this is for the million dollars?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Right, this is for a million dollars. And I think
you're gonna get this because I even I knew this one,
all right? Question? What did House of Pain want to
do in their nineteen ninety two song A Twist and
shout b Touch the floor? See jump Around, jump around?

(02:36):
When it gives you the when it gives you the
multiple choice? Yeah, pretty, it's a pretty surefire guess.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
We can pick one, pick one to ask our listeners
and don't give them the choice.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Okay, here's one. Here's one, and I didn't know this.
I have the answer here, but I did not know
this one. But I bet I bet our listeners will
question in Saved by the Bell, what were Zach and
Kelly dressed up as as the night they broke up?
Should I give the multiple choices? I bet there's people
out there who are going to know this without the

(03:07):
multiple choice, but I'll give it.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
I have no idea either. I have the answer. I'm
going to keep it to myself until next week. I'm
going to put this aside. But a Romeo and Juliet
B scientists see Cowboy and Cowgirl, and I will not
share that answer until next week. Let's see if people
are this is one we'll really know if people are listening.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
If people comment, yeah, they can comment on our Instagram page.
Hey dude, the nineties called with what Zach and Kelly.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Were rest when they broke up on Save by the Bell.
All right, we have our guest in the waiting room,
and this is an awesome yest. Oh you've got icon
Iicon boy meets World Icon, Nineties Icon, Nickelodeon Early Days Icon.
Should we welcome in, mister Wilfredell.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Hell, hey look at you and your boosh. Oh god,
I live in this thing. I live in this thing. Yeah,
the voiceover actor King welcome.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Some iHeart podcast crossover.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, some synergy like the old Disney channel Nickelodeon days.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Synergy on the network.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, we have a lot in common, we do.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
This is awesome. This is so Why don't we start
with Nickelodeon, right, Okay.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Because you know we all work together without probably realizing
that we work together back in the day, right, Yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Were one of the co hosts of Don't Just Sit There.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
I was from eighty eight to ninety I think, and
then we ended at that big Universal Studios.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Live party thing where we all were. Yeah, us, that's
I remember that so well. I do too.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
That well, it's still the most fun I've ever had
in my life. So for a month before the park opened,
the Nickelodeon flew my co hosts and I down there,
and Robin from Doubledare was our legal guardian and we
just had to go in the park and ride the
rides every single day, over and over again with a
film crew. So we had at thirteen, I had a

(05:23):
literally had an amusement park to myself with my friends
for a month.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, well that shows you the hierarchy of who got
better a better weekend out of it, because I don't
think I think we only got the night that it
was actually opening that we had days.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, you got you guys had the but you did
have the thing that we did not have for your show,
which was money. So your show you were like shooting
on like a ranch and all this. We had one
tidy studio in New York where we bought our own Twizzlers.

Speaker 4 (05:54):
It was awful. Yeah, so very very different.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Nickelodeon experience.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Didn't give you twizzlers. There's okay service.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Actually the craft service that was another funny story.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
They used to just pump us up on sugar, to
the point where they taught us how to take the
front off the coke machine so you could just get
the syrup.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh no, no, no, oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
So we would just do shots of the coke syrup
without the actual.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Mixing line producer. It's like the kids are getting tired.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
We would just get pumped up on all this syrup.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Was great Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon in the eighties. Yeah, so was
that was when you were cast on? That was that
the origin of don't just sit like were you? Because
because then it became a new group right of of
co hosts.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well so we they there was a there were four
of them that started the show in eighty seven eighty eight,
and they replaced one of them, so Matt Ally and
Wendy went on to continue to do the show, right
and do I still we still talk? You know, we
had we had their like eightieth reunion or whatever it
was year and one Bja Shaeffer, who was one of

(07:04):
the original hosts, he left and then they cast me
in New York. But my final audition, it was myself
and one other kid and we had to actually shoot
an episode and interview a special guest and do the
skits and all that stuff. And the other kid went
on to you know, Entourage, was Kevin Connolly. So it
was the two of us together.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Turning on a couple of weeks ago. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Still every time I see him, he still goes, oh, yeah,
thanks for stealing my job at Dick.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
So was that Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Wait, you were only thirteen when you hosted that show?

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Twell, I was twelve years old. I turned thirteen on
the set the day I turned thirteen. I took thirteenth birthday.
I interviewed Robert England, who was Freddy Krueger, and he
heard it was my birthday and he brought me a
whole box full of Freddy Krueger swag, which is cool.
I got the glove and the mask and all that.
I still have it.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Oh, that's like og Freddy Krueger. Like the original years.
It was a very.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
We had fun Nickelodeon back in the day. Was it
was a really especially if you're thirteen fourteen years old.
I mean it was the dream job. You had food
fights every day. And I actually went to you can't
do that on television and got slimed.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
I mean it was like old school.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. Still to this day, David and I talk about
the fact that we never got slimed, like.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
Really no, it was real.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Putting it out there in the universe that we somehow
secretly want to get slimmed, and people say, you really
don't want to get sligned, you do.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
I flew to Ottawa and I was on the set
of Youkay, I got to pop out of lock Hey, Mucy,
I got to pop out of all the lockers, and you.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Were on you can't do that on television?

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Well, they took so.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
One of the things we did on Don't just sit
there is we would go to the other shows on
the channel and interview all the people. So I went
up there and actually did an episode if you can't
do that on television.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Popped out of the lockers, got slimed.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
I mean, oh my god, you're an og Nickelodeon that, Christine.
That's before our time.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
I know. That is the cool. It was great.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Listen. Something we all have in common is, you know,
Christine grew up in Pennsylvania. I grew up in Westchester,
New York. Okay, you're from Connecticut. Would I would take
the train into the city and run around on auditions.
And I don't know what was your experience like as
a younger actor living in Connecticut.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, I tell people my story and they think I'm
lying or they think my parents had a serious problem.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
So both my parents are attorneys.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
My father at eighty four, are going to be eighty
five this month, still practicing lawyer, and so they kind
of said, hey, if you want to be an actor,
that's great, but we can't give up our careers for you.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
So you're going to have to take the bus.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
So at eleven years old, my dad would pick me
up at school or someone would pick me up at school,
drop me off at the bus station in Farmington, Connecticut.
I would take the bus to New York three hours down,
get off at Port Authority. My manager would pick me
up most of the time, and I would walk the streets.
At eleven years old, I would go to my audition.

(10:05):
I you know, start the stories are awful. I started
smoking at a very young age, so I would go
and I would buy my cigarettes. I would buy a
couple porn magazines because I knew that I could sell
them for way more money to my friends back in Connecticut.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
When you could check up the price. So I would
stop at the kiosk.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
They would look at me and say, well, you're eleven,
so of course here are cigarettes and porn.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
This is like the dark home alone.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
I tell my parents these stories now and they are
retroactively mortified that any of this ever happened.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
But I loved it.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I'm from a small town in Connecticut called Avon. It's
a beautiful place. It's in the middle of the woods.
It was a wonderful place to grow up. But I
experienced more real life than the three hours or four
hours I was in New York City every week than
I ever did in Avon, and it was a great
way to just see the world. So yeah, from eleven
to fifteen, I was auditioning out of New York sixteen,

(11:04):
and then at sixteen I got boring, me too old,
and I moved to California. But everywhere where were you
from in Pennsylvania just curious.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right outside of Allentown, like a suburb of Allentown. So
we also would take the bus front where there was
no train, so we would do the bus and go
into Port Authority. And then my mom started to get
daring and she would drive me in and like drive
me straight to an audition. Like we used to make
a day of it. We would drive in, we'd park
or take the bus, and then we'd go have luck.

(11:33):
Like we were sort of like, this is like we
got to enjoy this right now because this is like
fun and who knows when this is gonna go away?
And then it's just it was so though time with
mom right the car rides pre phone, so we would
actually listen to music together and talk.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
With kid and you had your mom there to buy
you your cigarettes and cigarettes.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, exactly, it's so much better.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
I like, in the middle of you two, I would
I would take I would go from Scarsdale High School
to the train station. I'd run into the city. And
I had a few friends, one of my best friends,
Peter Smith and Chris Barnes, you know who. Yes, there
were a bunch of New York younger actors and we
just meet up and we'd see each other our commercial

(12:20):
auditions or pilot auditions. I would get to Grand Central,
I'd get like, you know, my tomorrow pizza or whatever,
and yeah, but it made us you know, listen, this
generation right now is so coddled right, like, we know
where they are every second of every minute, and they're
on our find my iPhone. I was running around the
city at fourteen, and my parents.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Had no communication, no way for me. You had to
go to a payphone. I remember going to payphones to
say to my parents, Okay, I got there, I got here,
I'm meeting my friend or doing whatever. But I mean
so crazy, Well that was the circuit. I mean, that
was the circuit in the eighties in New York.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
I mean, you always all the same people at all
these auditions, and I had heard David. I had heard
your name because again being I think you're little old
than me, but not much to where we're probably up
against the same things. And you always said like, oh
well there's a new pilot coming out and David Lasher's
and I was like, oh great, so that.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Liked it was it was you.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
It was you for TV and a kidnamed Mike Moran
for commercials where you'd walk in and be like, well,
then there's I just took a three hour bus ride
for no point, no reason whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
I had that.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Person too, it was Jennifer McComb. I had. There's always
the one your nigh became one of my best friends
too years later. But I would walk in and say, oh,
Jen's here. Forget I'm not getting this, keep your closer.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I didn't care if I got anything. Really, the experience,
I mean, I didn't like going into the city and
running around was was the fun for me.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, no, I mean that was And then when don't
you sit there? Started again. My parents. My father is
not only a you know, practicing lawyer, but he's also
captain in the navy, and my mom ran all three
courts in connetic so they when I got don't just
sit there? They Nickelodeon had learned by that point if
they if you can shoot a season or two in
the summer so the kids don't have to go to school,

(14:10):
that's the best possible time to do it. So, you know,
I had to move to New York for a summer.
My oldest brother came with me as my guardian. He
took like a semester off from school. He became a
janitor in the city so we could live together in
this apartment.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
And that's we just lived together in the city.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
I was twelve and I'm going to work and making
my dinner and it was just again, you grew up
so much faster, but it gave me such a base
of what I then needed when I moved to La
that by that point, at sixteen, I was already might
as well have been thirty.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
So oh yeah, it was great. Owes. How does a
young you know, pre teen in Avon, Connecticut decide he
wants to be an actor? Did you do school plays?
Did you just love TV and movies? And so say TV?

Speaker 3 (14:56):
TV is the f And I say this twenty feet
away from the love of my life in the other room,
and my wife TV will always be the love of
my life, and she knows that. She's like, the only
thing you'll ever leave me for is Mash. So I
totally understand that.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I grew up.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
It just it spoke to me from the Again. People
don't believe me when I say this, but it's true.
I'm named after a television character. My first full line
was based on a television show. My first full sentence
ever spoken, which character which I was always going to
be William, after my grandfather, but I was going to
be Billy. But my oldest brother's favorite show growing up
was Lost in Space with Will Robinson, So he said,

(15:32):
can we name him Will, and I became Will after
Will Robinson from Lost in Space who. I then got
to interview Billy Moomey and told him that story.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
But it was.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
And then my first full line ever was Cylon Raider
as jerk because the Silon Raiders in the nineteen seventies
from Battlestar Galactica scared me, so I yelled that and
ran out of the room.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Then, like every other actor, you're a ham.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
You're the class clown. You love making people laugh. We
started doing play. We had a free Friday in second
grade and Missus Collins allowed us to do whatever we wanted.
And I always put on a play and it was
always Stone Soup. I don't know if you remember that play.
And then it just that was in a smaller town
called Newington, Connecticut. Then I moved to Avon, where we
actually had a drama department, and then I started at

(16:18):
the Hartford Stage. My drama teacher there said there's a
play called The Dolls House. They're auditioning a bunch of kids.
I went in with a huge cattle call. There were
hundreds of kids. I got the smallest part in the play,
which was one line and a week before the play started,
they switched me with the lead kid and I ended
up having three full scenes. And of course, being a
young actor, I had no idea who was working with.

(16:40):
But I look back and the play was David Strether
and Mary McDonald, Jerry Bammon. I mean, it was just
the greatest thing Hartford. The Hartford Stage is actually it's
a legit theater. And the funny thing is, since I
was ten at the time, I had to leave halfway
through when the play, you know, during intermission, because I
was too young to stay.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
I still don't know how it ends. I literally have
never seen the.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
End of a dog Shouse so gibs so it's probably
a laugh riot, but it's still technical.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
I just saw the Jessica Chastaine production very recently and
we were just being our bands laughing. So you don't know,
you don't need to know.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
No, But Christine people, whenever younger people ask me, you know,
I want to get into acting, what advice can you
give me? I said, go do some community theater, you know,
if it's somebody who's a younger age. Because I started
that way. I know Christine as well. But like you learn,
whether you like that camaraderie, right, even if you have
one line to play, you're there every night rehearsing, and

(17:43):
that the unit, the hang.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
It's the hang, right, It's like it is I'm part
of this. We've talked about that with some of the
biggest actors that we've interviewed on here, who say that
it's like the in between moments. Those on three are
all just sitting around and waiting and chatting and getting
to know each other, and it's just we either love
it or you don't.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
We talk about that with Boy Mets World, with the
on Podmet World.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
We remember the in between moments way more than we
remember the episodes. I mean, we'll watching the episodes and
we have no We're going I don't know what happened
at all, but I remember this is the time I
slapped you in the head, and we like we remember that, right,
or fighting.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Or we had just seen that baseball game or whatever
it was.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Christine, we're the same way, right. You'll look at an
episode you'd be like, oh, we were fighting there where
Kelly was mad cry.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Or very briefly to go back to the Nickelodeon days,
I remember Christine having such a crush on you. I
think I was twelve, and when I then actually because
again being twelve or thirteen, I also watched Nickelodeon, so
I'm watching hey dude, and I remember just kind of going,
who is that?

Speaker 1 (18:52):
And that?

Speaker 3 (18:53):
And then when I saw you at the Universal Thing,
forget it, it was over. I think you were probably
what fifteen?

Speaker 1 (18:58):
No, I was keep going going, I was like seventeen
by that year.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I would have been like Missus Robinson.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yes, definitely at that time. That's a big age gap.
Then now we're great.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
But anything in twelve sounds bad unless the other age
is twelve.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
It really doesn't sound.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
It may December exactly.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
So but oh that's so cool. Yeah, I remember that
weekend so well and it was so cool. I always
say this to David. It was so cool for us
because even you guys on don't just sit there were
cool to us because we were so in a bubble
of not We were not with other kids, we didn't
go to events, we weren't really we were so isolated.

(19:43):
So when we would go to one of those things
and see other actors and performers, it was like we
made it like we're here, like this is really cool
for us.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, you guys were really the Bridge Show because it
was one of those things where before Hey Dude, which
seemed again have money and production in value, Well, Nickelodeon
was just like we've got to it seemed, it seemed.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
But that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
You they were hiring older actors before it was just
like they'd throw kids on a stage and have us
do a food fight.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
I mean, that was old school Nickelodeon.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
So when we saw there was like, what and stories
an you were doing things on the shows.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
Oh, the network's going a different route, And it really was.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Then by the point that time they moved to Florida,
then they were doing the kind of the Clarissa's and
all the shows.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Some real studio audiences.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
We ad libbed like ninety percent of our show, it
seemed like. And you go back and you watch the
clips now, it's just like, wow, it would have been
great if somebody scripted something.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah. I talk about Don't Just Sit There being my
first talk show, and was it really you were a guest, Yes,
I was a guest. I went to the studio in
New York. Yeah, and I I mean, I don't know
how you can really bomb on Don't just sit there
when there's kids in the audience. But I bombed so
big because yes, I came on thinking I was going

(21:03):
to tell this great story about how we baked Pillsbury
dough on the set because it was so hot, and
it usually got a great reaction when I would tell
people in real life crickets crickets from Ali, crickets from
the audience. It was like, Allie was so. I remember
going really wow, and I was like, and every other

(21:26):
word out of my mouth was um and like, and
I was so self conscious. I still do that. We
still I do too when I listen. That's why it's
painful to listen back to these things. I can't stand
hearing it.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
This is the sign that hangs over my podcast booth.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
Don't say like wow or really or literally. I always
say the first episode.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Of like literally that oh god, God, I was a biggie.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
I say wow a lot. I got to start.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
It's a podcast filler. It's podcast filler is.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
It's what the vernacular is filling with likes and ums
and errs.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
It's what everybody now.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
We're going to be. We're all going to be so
self conscious from this moment.

Speaker 5 (22:10):
Yeah, I know, it's true like wow, like wow, So
let's get to the real, the real meat here.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
So you do. Don't just sit there and you know
you did you audition for Boy Meets World during while
you were still shooting. Don't just sit there moment you finished.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
No, I worked for so I Nickelodeon kind of kept
me on the channel in they tried to put me
on other shows. And then it's different hosting categories where
it was like, Hey, we're opening the slime Guyser at Universal,
will come down and host a special event for that.
So I was with Nickelodeon from twelve to fifteen, and then,
like we all got back in the day, you'd get

(23:01):
a call from your manager or your agent saying, hey,
there's a new show.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
Coming out at pilot season.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
At the time, it was called the untitled Ben Savage Project,
and they want you to come and read for the
Older Brother.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
And I got sick.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
I was going to go down, and I got ill
and couldn't go, and they cast the show and shot
the pilot with somebody else. Tell the story the same way,
because it's unfortunate, but he was a fine actor. Was
nothing wrong with him. But he and Ben were the
same height, and they knew that Ben was going to
grow and they wanted the older brother to look more
like an older brother. So they ended up recasting the

(23:34):
part and I got another chance to go back and
read and read in New York.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
They sent the tape in and I got a call.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, my dad and I had gone out previously
the year before. I mean, that was the coolest thing,
you knew when the call backstage got to we want
to fly you to a screen test in Los Angeles,
And I had done that two or three times, and
this is my third time in a row. Was for
another Michael Jacobs project beforehand, called Almost Home, which was
a spin off of the Torqulsons, So.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
They knew I was at that point.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
And I read for Eric and they sent me to
LA and you were talking about payphone.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
So I went in and I did my audition. My
dad was there.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
I thought, I absolutely bombed. I got to read with Ben.
It was still called the Untitled Ben Savage Project that
it was originally called eleven and then they changed that
to untitled Ben Savage and then they didn't know what
they were going to cost.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
So I bombed my audition and I my dad said,
all right, well, we're here, what do you want to do?

Speaker 3 (24:24):
And I didn't know anything about Los Angeles at the time,
but I knew there was the Ripley's Believe It or
Not Museum in Hollywood on Holly on Hollywood Boulevard.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
I said, I want to go there, so we can
drive down there. Yeah, it was such a tourist thing.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
I was looking at the handprints, and so before we
go in, my dad says, look, why don't you at
least call your agent in New York and tell him
it didn't go well. And so the bank of payphones
that I went to was there until maybe five years ago,
was one of the last phone banks taken out of
Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
I would always drive by and see and I picked
up the phone.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I called and I said, hey, Steve, And before I
could say anything, he said you. He said, you got it,
So you better figure out what you're doing because you're
moving to LA It had already been picked up for
thirteen episodes since I missed the pilot. So my dad
and I ran through Ripley's Believe It or Not because
I still wanted to do it.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
And then had to find a place to live.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
So we spent the rest of the day stumbling upon
the oak Wood Apartments where everybody say that.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Everybody's first home.

Speaker 4 (25:25):
Everybody maybe why three seventeen?

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Why three seventeen right right right over right over Barned
It was our park point that was the other one.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
Those are the only ones that anybody lived at.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
And so yeah, we found the oak Wood and I
think it was like a month later. I lived in
la and I've now been here thirty five years.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Or Kevin Connolly talked about when he got Rocky five
it was his first job, and Christine right, he said,
there was the most euphoria I've ever felt in my life?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Is that first getting that job?

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yes, yeah, when you're running through that wax museum, there's
probably if you can bottle that feeling amazing, I mean amazing.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
It's it's one of those things. And then you're trying
to chase it. It's like a drug. You try to
chase that. It was because again going back to growing up,
all I ever wanted to be was on a sitcom.
I never wanted to be a movie star. I always
tell people I wanted to be Michael J. Fox in
Family Ties, not Michael J. Fox.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
And back to the Future.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
I never ever wanted to be in the movies. I
just wanted to be on a long running sitcom. They
were my best friends growing up, and I just wanted
to be on one. And the idea that I was
going to get to step on a stage like that
and the lights were going to be there and the
audience was going to be there was just absolutely magical
to me still is.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
So it's was a wonderful feeling.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
And then I'm imagining your father and where his mind was.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Navy veteran.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, now my biggest fan, though to this day my
parents are, but my dad, especially everywhere we go, he
still asked people if they've seen Boy Met World if
they listened to.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
The podcast everywhere he was actually just a guess.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
One of the things we did on Podmetworld is we
had our parents on, so we each did a you know,
Danielle's mom came on, Riders mom and dad came on,
and my mom was under the weather at the time,
so my dad came on.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
We did separate episodes with all the parents.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Oh, I want I have to listen to that.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
There's so much fun because it's just it's from their
perspective of when we got the parts, or when we
had to move out, or what it was like. You know,
Rider's mom going getting into how they used to get
into fights, and it was it was really interesting to
hear the parents kind of point of view because we
were lucky none of us had stage parents, which made
life on the set a heck of a lot easier.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
But that kind of moment of him, I'll never forget.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
I could see I can still see his face when
I got the job because he was so proud and
it was just a very cool moment in my life.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
We have in the notes and we had William and
Bonnie on the way back, and honestly, I remember David
and I saying, like, you know, do they even know
who we are? What are we going to talk? It
was one of my favorite episodes ever, having them on
and talking to them. And I'm seeing here in our

(28:21):
notes that you credit William for teaching you how to
be a professional actor, and he talked a little bit
about that, about how he took you all and respected
you and didn't tell you what to do, but you
sort of. I mean, what an amazing experience to be
on a set with a like a veteran in that way,
like he had done everything.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
He had and didn't.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
The thing that was amazing is we didn't find out
until years later that he was also a child actor.
He kept that from us where he was thrown into
the business at five or six years old.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
He started on vaudeville and then did radio plays.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
And he didn't want us to others, right, he and
his brothers, they would get on stay talked about it
with us, yes, and so he didn't want us to
know that.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
He thought that would somehow taint his relationship with us
if we knew that he had been in the same
position we were in. So he just very much taught
by example. The first couple of years was obviously it
was incredibly daunting to be around him, but he was
never late, never dropped a line, always knew what he

(29:22):
was doing. I mean, it was just that's was William Daniels.
Your call time is eight, you're there at seven, and
you're ready to go. You are a professional. I don't
care that you're eleven years old. You were a professional
actor and you're part of the company. This is what
we do. And then he and I really bonded and
by they started to put our characters together and partner
us up. And I remember one episode him finally realizing

(29:43):
it was going to be the two of us together,
and he put his arm around me and says, it
looks like you're my knew Ed Bagley.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Which was so cool.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
And then we've been close ever since, so it's yeah,
he's I always say, my father taught me how to
be a man.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
William Daniels taught me how to be a professional.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
He really beautiful. Yeah he was.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
He was you couldn't have had and and when you
grow up in that, you don't realize that it is rare.
So every job I did after Boy Meets World, I
had one director come up to me the second or
third show I did after Boy Meets Roll and said,
I just want to thank you for always being on time.
And you realize that's a thing that some people just
don't do do right, you know if all time's nine

(30:25):
and they roll in nine p thirty, ten o'clock, Hey,
it is what it is that did not fly.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
For us, And we took that with us everywhere we go.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
It's where we just you're not late, You're not going, Hey,
what are we shooting today?

Speaker 4 (30:38):
I didn't read the script.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
You are prepared to go because this is your job,
and that.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
All came from building Will.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
That's that speaks to any business, anything you're doing in life.
If you're if you're a person that's late and waste
someone's time, you're bottom of the list.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Give me it should be and should be because you're
there's a there's a narcissism that goes with with constantly
being late of we'll get to it when I get there, right.
Bill was just like, Nope, that's that's not how we
played for you exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
I just did a summer program over the at NYU
and their motto is early is on time, on time
as late it's late. Yeah, that's so. And my son
was the one who was getting there the hour early.
He was like, I'd rather be there early and go
get my breakfast nearby than that show up. He was
so panicked to be and they really did they, I

(31:32):
guess because it's one of those summer programs. They would
enforce the rule that if it was eight oh one
and you were supposed to be in that room before eight,
that door closed and you were locked out of the class,
even if you were in the building and in the
bathroom at that time, or put your stuff in the
room if you were not in that room at eight am,
doors closed.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Year out of that class, it could be the most
one and most important lesson that you could teach any kid.
Show up on time and ready.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
Yeah, on time and prepared. That's that's what you need.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
And yeah, there's kind of also I'm noticing and every
time I say things like this, I feel so old.
But you do notice with the younger generation there is
does seem to also be kind of a lack of consequence.
So I love hearing that the door is shut and
it's locked. That's that wasn't on us. Don't don't look
it up. And you hear that especially, you would hear
that in La all the time traffic was terrible.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well, was traffic just terrible today?

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Because it's terrible every day. Well, you can either either
get here fifteen minutes later an hour early. Okay, that
means you get here an hour early.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
That's what that means, do some work. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
If someone gives traffic as an excuse for being late,
it's even more egregious. Just say I'm sorry, you.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Know exactly exact, but that was you would you would
get that a lot, and people would get a reputation
of that's what you you know, that's what's come to
expect of you. Is that they're going to be late.
They're not going to be prepared. That's just how it is.
And uh yeah, that just didn't fly for us. So
those are the things that Bill taught us more than
anything else, was just how to take everything seriously. And

(33:07):
this is your job. Yes, you are a child actor,
but you're a professional actor.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
This is what you do.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
You're getting paid, you're here, this is a network televisions. Here,
you get fired.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Well again, we were on a Michael Jacobs show, so
people were getting fired every day.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh it happens. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Hi, I'm Kate Hudson and I'm Oliver Hudson. And at
last I checked for siblings and this is sibling revelry.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
We're full blood siblings, the only.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Full blood and our family well not in the world,
I mean in the whole world.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
This is it, like no one anyway.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
We're back with season four. I can't believe it.

Speaker 6 (33:51):
Yes, I'm so excited, bigger and better than ever. You
might be asking yourself, what is sibling revelry?

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, well we just made it up. There is no
sibling revelry. It's reveling in your sibling and.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
It's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know,
to really like all kinds of different siblings and it's
going to be an awesome season.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
So listen to Sibling Revelry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Or wherever you listen to God. When I was doing
my research, I was going on YouTube and looking at
videos and you and Rider like on the Toy Story
Red Carpet as little Ladies, Yeah, so cute, like I

(34:41):
love going down this rabbit hole. And then there was
a there was a a a compilation of your Kinie.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Your Phoenie calls Yes.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yes, so your improvidence. They're so fun, it seems like
by and then I want to go back to people
getting fired, which is also juicy and great, but it
does feel like when you're not one being high exactly,
but it feels like you were given so much freedom.
And maybe that came later, but it just felt like

(35:11):
it was you got to play on the show. Over
the course of the it's run.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
I did, and I think I got to play a
bit more than some of the younger actors did that.
Being said, though, you know, and I credit Michael for
this is Michael was. He was a stern task master.
Certainly we were legendary, or he's legendary for his note sessions.
So we would finish a run through or finish something,
and you know, we're kids, and we'd have an hour

(35:38):
and a half note session where it's a line by
line in front of everybody, Here's what you did wrong,
Here's how it didn't work.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
And this was daily.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
It was brutal. He also though he wanted us to grow.
I mean that was important. So when he saw that,
I took it to a level of and it wasn't
a better actor than any of the other people in
the show, far from it, but it was He gave
me more freedom to kind of throw out lines, and
they started small, where they would start as buttons of

(36:08):
a scene, like the scene. We'd already shot the scene,
so if they wanted to move on, they could, but
I'd add a little line or something at the end.
And then it became just me being more and more
of a ham and them giving me the freedom to
kind of okay, let him play and do what he wants.
To do so that I mean that in that sense
he did help me grow, because it was all of
comedy is music, and the sitcom especially can be a

(36:32):
very standard beat. And the greatest sitcom actors of all
time are the actors where you don't know where the
beat is coming from. So when you get something like
rest of Matthew Perry, where you didn't know where the
next line like whoa what where did that inflection? That's
what you got when you read yeah it is. It changes.
So when you think it's just going to be bump bump, bump, bump, bump,

(36:54):
bump bump, and it goes bump, but then everything changes
in the scene. And those are the ones where you
watch Carol Burnette and you watch Bob Newhart and you
just you think you know where the comedy is going
to go, and then it goes somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
And so Michael loved that.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Michael loved because he also loved music, So he loved
people that could playoff beat, and he encouraged it when
when he could. But then there were also times he
was stern and no, this is say the line like
this and that.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Well, when you talk about people getting fired, I mean David,
You and I have both talked about being coming in
as guest stars on long running shows. When you come
in and that feat that is that was the guest
star's biggest fear that if you come in and that
first read through you don't get a laugh where you
know there's supposed to be a laugh or the first
run through for that, you're going to be asked. I mean,

(37:43):
and it's real and it's and so did you find
that that is where that was happening on Boyne's World?
Was it the guest stars? Was it? It was everywhere?
It was everywhere.

Speaker 4 (37:52):
I still think I'm going to be fired from boring
to twelve, I would not be you know, it was that,
it was it was Michael.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Guest stars especially so when the show started, it was
supposed to be two best friends with Corey, and we
jokingly called the chair that the third kid would always
sit in the death chair because no matter who sat there,
they'd be gone. So for the first five or six episode,
they tried a third kid and the kid'd be gone.
So the death chair in the cafeteria just became a thing.

(38:26):
And then they'd try characters for seasons or two at
a time. Who would then just be told you're not
coming back the next season, and it was tough on us, it.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Was, but the show was constantly growing.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
And you know, people can say what they want about Michael,
and people have said a lot about him, but he's a.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Genius when it comes to putting a television show together.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Well, he had.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Done before Boy Means World. I'm looking on here. He
had done Charles in Charge My Two Dads, and he
produced a movie quiz show Yeah really yep, and that
showed dinosaurs.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
I remember dinosaurs. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
He Didhtorical Sins Almost Home, then Boy Meets World, so he.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Was on a roll when he created boys.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
And he's a family I mean when it comes to
family sitcom, especially, Michael is brilliant at riding that line
of not talking down to kids, talking to kids, and
not making it so overly sappy that everything looks like
a very special episode.

Speaker 4 (39:23):
He could.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
He knew how to get the message across without the
cheesy string music in the background while the father sits
the kid on the knee and explains what happens.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
So he was very very good at.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
That, and Boy Meets World was constantly changing as we
were growing up. The show was becoming about different things.
We're noticing that as we watch now where you know
season two, no season three of Boy Meets World. If
you had never seen Boy Meets World, the boy in
Boy Meets World is Rider, is Sean, It's not Corey.
So if you had just turned on season three, episode one,

(39:54):
you would have thought the boy was a completely different boy.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
So they can't Why did they switch po central character.
It was just they were trying different dynamics of the show.
I mean season four so far, we just started watching
a lot of it is my Character. They just seem
to be changing their focuses as they go.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Meanwhile, the entire anchor of the show is Ben who
is it plays Corey and.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
Is just kills it week after week.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
I don't know how this kid, especially at eleven years old,
carried the weight to the world.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Were so cute, oh my god, and so good he
was well. I did a show with Ben Savage and
Christine and I talked about so we've talked about it
many times. Christine. He played my younger brother on a
Family Car.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yes, I know, okay.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
It was short lived sitcom with Robert Mitcham and Juliet
Lewis played our other sister. And Ben was seriously one
of the cutest, hammiest little kids, and he must have
gotten the untitled Ben Savage project right after that.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure ABC looked at him and
then they put him with Michael, and that combination of
Ben and Michael was just unstoppable because Ben is a
little Michael, so he you know, he knew what Michael wanted.
But again, he the first season, it's all been. There's
times where there's two or three scenes in a row
where he's the only one on film. He's running around

(41:08):
the house by himself, he's home aloning it, he's monologuing
of it was.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
It's truly all inspiring to watch what this kid did.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
But then they kind of tried to change the dynamics
a little bit as we're moving forward. They put like
they put Bill and I together for a while and
and that for some reason worked. They put you know,
a rider more and his Sean's home life, which was
not a happy place. They would put that front and
center for half a season or a season, So it
was it was interesting how they were trying the different things.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
But when did Danielle come on?

Speaker 3 (41:38):
She wasn't in the beginning, she was that's the thing
we are we it's the Mandela effect. We all thought
she had was in every episode all the time, and
we went back and watching the show and we're like,
where the hell are you?

Speaker 4 (41:50):
Like, what the weren't you? Were you ever on this show?

Speaker 3 (41:52):
So she was a guest star season one for a
few episodes, and then we thought she was a regular
by season two, but it turns out she's not a
regular regular till season four.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
So we were shocked that.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
My pay check, I'm sure could tell you that.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
She talked about that too, where it's like.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
You know it's there, but I was not that. It's
like she wasn't getting fired. So that's a good sign.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
They loved her. No, they loved her. She came in
and killed it.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
But yeah, talking about being a guest star and other shows,
that's just the hardest thing for an actress to go
into an established show and be a guest star. But again,
with my mind and my memory, I can do your
entire role from Seinfeld if you'd like.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
But that's again.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
How much memorable. It'sn't a weird and memorable Seinfeld too
great episode.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
So check my messages.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Yeah, nobody called She's just.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Sort of like, like, what's her issue? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Still the thing that's.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
My wife, and I will still do that. Err, she's
a loser.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, I don't know how much you want to talk
about it, but I in my in my research, I
stumbled onto an interview where you talked a lot about
your anxiety. Yeah, and just talking about that going on

(43:12):
to a show as a guest star, and things like how,
first of all, it's incredible that you're talking about it,
you know, it's it's I feel like in this generation
now I have two kids, there's so much social anxiety.
There's there's just anxiety period. But the way it was
a podcast that I stumbled on that I was and

(43:34):
I'm sure you can remember what it was, but you
were talking so candidly just about how it was crippling
to you to the point where you had to lie
and not take a job because you it was too
scary for you. Yeah. And I think we've all had
those experiences of feeling nervous or like oh I'm going
to suck, or I have sucked and I'm too afraid

(43:55):
to go in. I mean, let's face it, I think
we've all lied to our agents at some point, I'm
sure why we can't make an audition or or that
callback out of fear, so much fear, But I thought,
how incredible for you to be so honest about it
that it was. You said you were in Mexico, right,
you said you.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
I was.

Speaker 6 (44:16):
I was.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
I was in my backyard and I told my agent
that I was in Mexico because I was mid panic
attack at the time.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
And they were offering you the show, right, yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
Right for seven years, which show, I don't talk about.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
It, which because it's so respect and love.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
Heard the actor who they came you, by the way,
they probably would have recast me with him anyway, because
he was great and.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Was as at thirteen years old, you're hosting your own show. Well,
then years later you're anxious to go on an audition,
and it happened.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
So so I'm in the middle of shooting a film
called h Double Hockey Sticks. I'm in the middle of
a take and I have my first panic attack. They
used the take so I can actually watch my first
panic attack. Ever, I'm the only one who knows it,
but I go for panic attack like I can walk.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
And you I'm sure viscerally. Just oh, I thought it
was dying the way you talked about how you feel
it in your body. Because my daughter had had her
first panic attack in high school and thought she was
having a heart attack, and then then take her to
the emergency room and if she needed to hear a
medical person say, you're not going to die of this.
This is a thing.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Is you You have to be dying because there's no
other exclamation explanation for why, all of a sudden your
body and mind is doing this. Team so you it's
a stroke, it's it's a heart attack. It has to
be one of these things, because it can't be something
as simple as a chemical imbalance.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
It's it can't be.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
So I was I had to finish. It was like
the third day of shooting. So I had to finish
this film. And the problem is once you have once
you have your first panic attack and you don't know
what it is, you start to spiral. So then you
you're in your head. You're not sleeping, which is another
trigger for anxiety. So everything is just rolling in on
itself and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Well, how old were you at this point?

Speaker 3 (46:03):
I was twenty two, maybe twenty one twenty two. I
was in between seasons of Point Me to World. And
that's one of the things you'll notice is you see
one season, I'm really, really thin, and then I come
back and I put on like thirty pounds and it's
because of the medication I had to take just to
performsh So I had my first attack. It got to

(46:24):
the point where I finished the movie was able to.
I remember literally being hurled up in a ball in
the seat on the airplane to fly home from the movie, going,
I can't be on this flight right now. I have
to get off. I can't be on this flight. The
door shut, I'm going, I can't, I can't do this.
It was all in my head, by the way, because
I was still just suffering in silence, right and I

(46:44):
flew back to LA And after your first anxiety attack,
your whole life is different.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
Everything is different.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
The colors are different, the food tastes different, acting is different.
You are a different human being than you were the
nanosecond before you had the panic attack, and you're different
than for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
And is it because you're constantly in fear of when
will that happen again. It's not in my control. I
see no writing on the wall of the you know, oops,
this is about to happen, So I can no.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
It's it's you. At that point, you are you don't
know what it is. You don't know how to have
any sort of control over it. You don't know what's
going on in your body. All of a sudden, the
one thing you knew, your mind is no longer yours.
So I remember at one point being I was bedridden
for like two weeks with anxiety until finally I think

(47:39):
it was my older brother at the time. It's like, dude,
we got it. We have to do something about this,
you know, we got it. So I went to my doctor,
who said, you're this is all anxiety, and I said, no,
you don't, it's not.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
It can't be.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
It's cancer.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
It's an art something terrible.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
And he said, maybe you're right. Let me read you
some symptoms. Maybe it's this disease. And he read me
this list of and I went, yes, that's it. So
what is that And he turned over in pamphlet that
said anxiety.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
So I got my first pill that day.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Uh, And it got into therapy with talk therapy, which
I had never done before. And you just learn how
to cope with these things, these skills that you that
you're going to need uh to to move forward. And
then it gets to the point where now in my life,
I wouldn't know how not to have anxiety. It's such
a part of me and I'm so used to it

(48:32):
that it's just annoying. Now it's not. It's that's all
it is. It's you learn skills you're going to need
to deal with it. You also, you talk about how
I talk about it all the time. That's the first
thing you need to do is just talk about it, right,
That is the second.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yes. And by the way, how many people when you
talk about it are like I have that? I have
that shit.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Like if you're ten people and you go I deal
with anxiety, seven go, so do I?

Speaker 2 (49:00):
And it also helps other people?

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
That, oh will. And you know, a good friend of mine.
I can say this because he's so outspoken about it
and he was a guest on the show. Carson Daily
has committed himself to raising awareness to anxiety and mental health.
I mean, he's obsessed with it.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
You have to because it's it's super important and it's
it's so much more difficult now than even when I
was growing up. I mean, the three things I did
to really start to control my anxiety when I really
wanted to take the reins and say, all right, I'm
done with this, because I gave up my career for years.
I went I transitioned into voiceover because that was safe,

(49:38):
and I.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
Live your little booth right there exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
It is.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
It is the coolest job ever.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
I was very lucky in that I I got to
work a lot and it became the love of my life.
It's really phenomenal. God, now my wife is now third.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I was going to say, slider down the list rapidly.

Speaker 4 (50:01):
She's first.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
She knows that. But so I was able to stay
in the industry, but the anxiety kept me from doing
anything on camera. I lost my agent and manager. I
just by my own. I was like, I can't do
this anymore. I noted audition for anything. The audition became
a real bugaboo for me. So I just couldn't do it.
And eventually I went, Okay, I can't, I.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
Can't do this anymore. This is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
You've got even if you don't want to audition or
be in in front of the camera anymore. That's fine,
but you can't make that decision based in fear.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
If you want to say I'm.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Done acting, that's okay, but I'm going to say that
the anxiety is not It's going to be on your
so it's on my turn. So I have to figure
out how to do that. So the three things I did.
And here's the funny thing is I always tell people
the three things, and the first two they're like yes, yes,
and I get to the third one and they go, well,
So the first one is talking about it ye easiest

(50:58):
thing in the world, but for some reason people it's
the most difficult thing in the world. But it's a
game changer, is just talking about what you do. The
second is diet and exercise.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
You need to exercise, You need cardio.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
Cardio gets the blood pumping, it helps your mind, go
for a walk, get some fresh air. The food you
put into your body really matters. I'm not saying it
needs to be hugely clean. You can still cheat, but
you can't sit there eating crap all day long and
not exercising and think you're going to control your anxiety.
Everybody at this point goes I'm with you. And the
third thing is canceling all your social media. And this

(51:33):
is where they go, Well, my social media, really, what
do you do? I work in a bank. Well, then
you don't need your social media. No, I'm not on
any I canceled the three three and a half years ago.
I woke up one day and canceled everything. And I
didn't just cancel it. I got I didn't keep my name,
I didn't keep anything. I just but you don't even
scroll through Instagram. I now have a in Instagram that

(51:57):
I will do because so I can follow podmets where
if they need something for that. But I am basically
off of social media. I got some most I don't
do anything. Forget it. It's just not worth it. It
is will go down in history as one of the
worst inventions in humankind.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
It happened to humanity, Yes it is. It really doesn't
want to give you like a huge like a man allelujah.
So what you're doing because it's I I'm I have
a small little private account to follow my kids in there.
But I am not a public I'm not on X
or Twitter or any of it. And there's and believe me,
I scroll I watch it like puppy videos. I watched

(52:36):
you too, shot one thing, all of it, but I
it is so toxic and and it is. I mean
that's I understand why people use you, but you number three.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Because I mean there's been studies that shows it's it's
this as addictive as drugs. Maybe it's not probably not
as harmful as shooting heroin, but you're your body hits.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Yeah, we're not only.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
The wasted time, right, I get this thing, your screen time,
Apple or whoever will send me a thing. So you
spent eight hours? What else could I have been doing?
But then it's that that fomo stuff, right, that the
psychological of seeing everybody's greatest moments, who's lives.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Nobody is in a moment where the fighting minutes ago.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, right, But we understand that as adults, right, I know,
these family go climbing onto a private plane. Is you
know that's not how that that's not the true story.
But a twelve year old thinks that's the real world.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Yeah, well not only that, but it's hard enough to
be a kid, but to now literally be able to
look over and see the kid next to you has
more followers than you do. There's I can look at
numbers it's awful.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Or the innocent photo of the party that happened with
ten kids that your kid wasn't invited to. And my
I have kids, my teenagers. When they were teenagers, they
were people they didn't even want to be hanging out with.
But it was something about seeing everybody there and knowing
you weren't even asked to be there. It's so it hurts.
It just hurts, and it's it's yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
But even as even as grown ups, though, I feel
like the whole world's turned into a giant high school.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
It has.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
I hated high school.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
The popular kids.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Yeah, it's crazy popular kids, and and it's it's it
is very it's it's horrible. If think about where we
would be, not only as a society but as people
as individuals, if you took half that time away and
instead read read a book. Let's say you do two

(54:52):
hours of social media day. Okay, do an hour and
read for an hour, your life is going to change.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I kick my kids to watch an hour and a
half movie.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
How are your kids hour and a half? Are there
movies that that are outvies anymore? Because I can't find one.
How old are your kids.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
I have twenty eighteen and fourteen okay, and.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I have almost twenty two and eighteen.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
Okay, and they nerd. So one of the things that
really helps with reading is finding their nerdom. Is there
a nerdom that they're into anything, fantasy, role playing games,
anything that where it's really there.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
The daughter who's a big reader, but she loves social
media too. And then I have the son who's not
the big reader, but he's not a social media kid.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
So i'm will you balance there? Yeah, there's balance.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
It's not like an addicted video gamer or so like
he's he's a New York Knicks fan. That's his nerd
to go.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
He has a social media count too, Yes, that's going
to see also is obsessed with sports, he read watch anything.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Right.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
There you go, there's your nerdom. That's what that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
You do.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
You need to find your undrdom because then you go
down the rabbit hole of whatever you want to do.
And so, yes, but that's so social media is those
are the best ways to deal with your anxiety. Just
get rid of it, go for a walk, you know.
And then here's one thing I talk about. It's very
very simple. If anybody is about to have a panic attack,
you feel yourself having a panic attack, count down in

(56:22):
your mind or out loud, doesn't matter. From one hundred
to zero by threes, it will change words backwards, brought
to zero by threes, it'll change ninety ninety one, ninety seven,
ninety four, ninety one, eighty eight. It retriggers your brain
because it's now triggering the analytical side of your brain
to deal with your.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Number and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Speaker 4 (56:45):
It is, it's there's all these different things.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
So that plus coupled with either it's either called the
four five six or the five six five method of breathing,
which is, yeah, you breathe in for five seconds, you
hold it for six seconds, you breathe out for five seconds.
You do that three times, and then you count backwards.
You're gonna be like, oh, I don't my anxiety has
gone right now. They are amazing tools and they help
They say they're so helpful because one of the things

(57:07):
you also have to realize is this is going to
be a part of you.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
It's it's going to be a part of you for
a while.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
So you know, I always liken it to having a
puppy and God willing that the dog is going to
be with you for years and years and years. It's
a puppy you're going to have for the rest of
your life. So do you want the dog that's running
around biting everybody that has you have no control over,
that's dominating your life. Or do you want to take
control and say, I'm going to train this dog. That's
what you've got to do. And you can do that

(57:32):
with your anxiety. Now again, it's not like I can
conquer my anxiety.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
People.

Speaker 4 (57:36):
Some people need medication.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Talk talk therapy is hugely important, but there are ways
to Again, you're probably not going to cure it, but
there's certainly ways to train the dog and.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Yeah, living with it. Living. That's so thank you for
sharing that.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
It's amazing that you're open and honest about it and
it probably helps a lot of people, I hope. So
can we talk about pod Meats Worlds, your podcast, which
is wildly successful. We're at the same company and Amy

(58:13):
Sugarman we all work with and I remember she told
me she was working on your show before we launched.
She said, let me launch this show and then we'll
get years going. But congrats on the success, because that's
really phenomenal. And what's it been like revisiting your old show.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
It's certainly been interesting.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Yeah, we we did not know we were going to
have the success that we did. None of us could
could have thought that was going to turn into what
it did, frankly, but we you know the way that
the two of you, that the dialogue the two of
you have together, you can't fake that.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
You can't fake the history that you've had.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
And so Writer and Danielle and I have been in
each other's lives for thirty years, and the conversations we
were having over dinner at these conventions are the conversations
we have on the podcast. Writer said that when we
were we weren't recording at the time. We were somewhere
and he said, why don't we ever get sick of
talking to each other?

Speaker 4 (59:08):
We'll be we're doing live shows now.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
We did did eighteen or nineteen live shows across the
country last year, and we would drive from one to
the other, and sometimes there would be six or seven
hour drives and we could.

Speaker 4 (59:20):
Have done five podcasts. We're still talking. It's just what
we What the hell?

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Either were such narcissists that we love hearing our own voices,
but we just love talking and it always leads to
some weird philosophical or political debate and it ends up
just being part of the podcast. And then to the
whole idea of the show was that you know, I
hadn't seen it in thirty years, Danielle hadn't seen it

(59:46):
in thirty years, and writer had never seen it, so yes.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
He wouldn't watch. No, he'd never seen another he saw.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
He's one of those never seen an episode of boy
means he saw I think the first year he saw
the episodes, and then he refused to watch because he
hated how he looked and he was an awkward teenager.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
He thought, that fascinates me. Yes, and you can't. It's
I get it. But then most of us still watch
it anyway, even though we know it's that's what I did.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
I'll judge myself what.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
I'm watching totally.

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
He had, so it's him watching for the first time ever.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
That's insane, watching himself from twenty years ago for the
first one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
And so we're that's what we're doing, and we're just
having a blast and people are really loving it and
and all the guest stars are coming back and we're
just having so much fun being with everybody again and
being with each other.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
Yeah, it's been. It's been really magical. It has it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Does It sounds like the magic is first of all,
just how much you love each other, but also just
going back and revisiting for most of you who just
don't remember it, Like so I imagine just like making
fun of each other and all, like you just are
at each other and stop. We all want to hear it.
We love that stuff, right, and then we give some

(01:00:59):
of the juicy behind the scenes stuff that tends to happen.
But yeah, it's we've been having so much fun. Yeah,
well everything's clickbait nowadays.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Even if you don't say anything clickbait, it's then they
find something.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
Yeah, So maybe I kissed her?

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Yeah maybe I didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Oh my favorite is so mel Mel came on.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Melissa Joonhart came on, and she and I went on
one date when we were thirteen, and we talked about that,
and the next day the headlines were secret romance revealed,
and she told.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
Me, she's like, dude, did we even hold hands?

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
I don't know, but apparently we were basically married at thirteen,
So Yeah, it's funny to watch how what's taken and
what isn't?

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Did you know the show? I'm sure I know it
was a hit, show went for so many years, but
did you know how poignant it was, how that it
would last and people would be so attached to it
this many years later.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
And we also, we weren't a hit when we were on.
We were on, but we weren't super sill. I mean
I always equated us to Wings. We were the Wings
of the kids show where it's like people went, oh, yeah,
that show went a year, right Wings.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Wings was on for eight years. Yes, And I don't think.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Even the people on Wings remember that Wings went for
eight years.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
And they both said we were like.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
We're amys.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
We got to the point where and then they just
got to have fun with it because for so long.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
I was Boymans World. We were that on TGIF where
we just kept going. We weren't in TV Guide finally
came and did a photo shoot with us and put us,
I think on the cover. It was the second half
of our last season, season seven.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
We just we just kept going. But and we had fans.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
We didn't realize how are how ensconced our fan base
was with Boymans World until the second and third runs
of the syndication, and now we're even seeing more and
more of you know people.

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):
I watch it with my grandkids. It's like, oh my god,
it's been around that long.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
So it's yeah, I have to say, who's eighteen. It's
also the new generation of kids finding it and I,
you know, David and I talked about this when we
started this podcast, is that we have the you know,
we we love talking about it. It's our nostalgia, but
our kids are the ones who are fascinated by it
and they're going back and watching these shows for the

(01:03:18):
first time. But my son is so unimpressed at professional athletes, anybody,
any NBA player, but he'll always say like, who's your guest?
Who's your guest? And I told him you're coming up.
He's like, Oh, that's awesome. He's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:03:32):
Oh that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
You hear that? Yeah, street cred in this household good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
My daughter Chelsea too, she's there was a there was
a girl meets.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
Yeah, GIRLI World, Yeah, Girlie t World came.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
My fourteen year old was like, oh, I know, girl
meats World.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
There you go nice, And then I get a lot
of stuff for the animation stuff for you know, the
kids are still finding Batman, or they're still finding Impossible,
or they're kind of finding some of these shows that
were that were important to us as kid.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Wait, you voiced Batman?

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Yes, I was. I was Batman. I was Batman in
a show called Batman Beyond. So I played played Terry
McGinnis and he was Batman was down here, which was
a ton of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Oh you recorded every episode in that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Well, that was back in the day. I did that
with Kevin Conroy, God rest him. So he was Yeah,
that was a that was a fun show. But that's
how I got my wife. I got to tell her
I was Batman and not be lying, which was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
And that's it. That's it. And now she's third on
your list of.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
For the record, that's a strong three though she knows
she's a strong third.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
She gets it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
For now. Well, so great to have you and catch
up with you. Thank you for coming on, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Hopefully we'll be able to do another live Universal something
someday where they're opening some old school Nickelodeon thing again
and they bring us all back. That would finally to
figure out a way to get you slimed, and it
can't just be somebody making up in a bucket. We've
got to have a Nickelodeon reunion where we get you slimed,
because there is a full on technique of how you're

(01:05:05):
supposed to get slimed that I was taught by that
you can't do that on television people.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
So what you're supposed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
To do is and oh man, god, I remember this
like it was yesterday. They're like, all right, here's what
you gotta do. You have to wait till when the
first drops hit the top of your head.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
You then have to look to the heavens like I
can't believe this is happening.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
So the rest of it covers your whole phone.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Right, your instinct would be to go down, right, The
instinct is it you get home and you want to
put your head down and cover yourself, but you're supposed
to open up.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
You're supposed to get hit and go like what.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Oh, I can't believe it, and then it goes everywhere.
So sure we get this to happen for you, because
it's magical.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
It's magical. I'm telling you, I know who we need it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
I know who to talk to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Okay, we're going to work this out. This is good.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Well, I'll get We'll get Melissa Joonhart. We'll get a
bunch of old Nickelodeon people together.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
And we will do something together.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
Old school Nickelodeon will go take back the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
We have to take back the studio. There's our name.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
That's what the reunions call.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Oh, I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
My goodn't Nickelodeon take back the studio? Who do we reunion?

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Done?

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Done and done.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
I'll get We'll get the crew of Boy meets of
don't just sit there. I will make sure Melissa gets
her crew together. We'll get everybody together and we will
do get keen and everyone will everyone will do it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
Do this, I do it. Taking back the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Love it studio.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Congratulations and thanks for thanking will thank you, Buddy By.
That was one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever heard.
It's right, take back the studio, a reunion of all
Nickelodeon's challenge over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
And and yes, I mean like, I mean, that's that's
a that could I mean that would be big.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
I mean that's an hour special. That's not just like
a con that's like, yeah, it could be televised.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
And first of all, how about the fact that that
gets slid in like right as we're saying goodbye, that's
like our magic moment.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
That's her, you know, Christine.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
I feel like I've had some brilliant ideas that I
just like off the flies throwing on a podcast like
they're all here wars with Meredith sound.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Oh man, he's terrific. He's that and that just great.
That was really really fun.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
What a great guy and uh yeah, I mean just
so honest about what he went through with the anxiety.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
That was I didn't realize that I couldn't find him
on social media, so I just started youtubing stuff and
found like lots of old videos, a lot of pod
meets World interviews that they did recently. But some this
podcast came up and I can't even blinking on the
name of it where he's you know, to me, it's
it's always eye catching when it talks about anxiety or
you know, somebody openly talking about a challenge like that.

(01:07:58):
And I was riveted, So I really I was, so
I'm so grateful he was willing to talk about it.
And it really feels like he's just you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Would never know. He seems like the most confident, comfortable.
I mean he was, he was acting when he was
twelve thirteen years old. I wouldn't think he was a
candidate to have debilitating anxiety.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
But no, no, it was just so helpful. It's just
so like you said, the rule number one, talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
So, you know what I wanted to ask him though,
why isn't Ben Savage on the Podmets World.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
I mean, I you know, in my li I stumbled
onto lots of notes and things online that they all
really just say that there was just a day that
Ben Savage just stopped returning their texts and calls. There
was no fallout, there was no drama, I mean, according
to them from what I saw in the in the news,

(01:08:51):
but that they're just not in each other's lives anymore,
which is sad. Sad. I think the word was hosted
that he ghosted them.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Oh my goodness. And now he's running for like congress
or something. Oh boy, all right, anyway, Yeah, Will was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
I love that dude, And thanks everybody for listening. We'll
be back next week with a new guest.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Have a great week, everybody, Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Make sure to subscribe and give us five stars, and.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
Please follow us on Instagram at Hey Dude.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
The nineties called see You next time.