The cast also said at 90s Con they're open to a reboot.
It's hard to picture anyone else playing the role of big brother Eric Matthews on the coming-of-age sitcom Boy Meets World, but Will Friedle came so close to missing out.
Friedle and Trina McGee, who played Angela Moore, spoke with ET's Brooke Anderson at 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, and they talked about how closely connected they've been since the hit ABC sitcom went off the air nearly 22 years ago. But, despite their closeness, Friedle shared a story even McGee hadn't heard -- Friedle missing his audition for the show!
"When they were casting for the show originally, it was called The Untitled Ben Savage Project," Friedle revealed. "And they were casting for an older brother and I got sick and couldn't go. And they cast another actor and went and shot the pilot. The actor was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. He was a fine actor, but he wasn't tall enough. He was the same size as Ben, and they knew Ben was going to grow and they wanted an older brother so they recast. But I always tell people, if that actor was five inches taller, I'm not sitting here right now. You never know how life is going to work. You just never know."
McGee, who starred in the final two seasons and played Shawn Hunter's (Rider Strong) love interest, also revealed just how close-knit they've remained since the series ended in 2000.
"I was going to say, we have a group text that we're all in," she said. Friedle added that the group, at times, gets together for lunches and dinners.
"Again, getting six or seven actors together is like herding cats," quipped Friedle. "It's difficult to get us all there, so it'll be two at this time, three at this time, all of us together for here. It's a lot of fun."
The show, which premiered in September 1994, has since seen a resurgence thanks to a younger audience consuming the show on the streaming service Disney+. Friedle jokes that a whole new generation will always see Savage, who played Cory Matthews, as a 13-year-old boy. And when he looks back on the show, he can't help but reminisce about the bond they formed when the cameras weren't rolling.
"It's the behind-the-scenes stuff," he said. "There were two shows -- there was Boy Meets World that everybody got to see, and then there was the kind of show we were doing every time behind the scenes. That was our '90s, was just being together. That's the stuff I remember."
With the cast being so close to this day, it's only fair to ask if they've thought about a reunion or reboot. The short answer, yes!
"We talk about it all the time," McGee said. "We're totally open. I think we might ... Danielle [Fishel] said something about we want to do a show with the cast of Boy Meets World that's not that show."
"Rebooting the cast, not rebooting the show, but rebooting the cast," Friedle explained. "Putting all of us in a different show as different characters, but with the entire cast." And that's because, according to McGee, their chemistry's still indelible.
"Because our chemistry together now, as actors, is just like, we all know what the other one's going to say," McGee said. Friedle concurred. "Yeah, she's right. We finish each other's jokes. It's like, OK, let's think about what we can do with that."
No reunion or reboot, however, would be complete without William Daniels, better known to Gen Y kids as Mr. Feeney. He turns 95 this month and, as Friedle put it, he's kind of everything in the Boy Meets World family.
"He's the nucleus, for sure," McGee added.
"First of all, as Mr. Feeney was one thing, but William Daniels himself is a consummate professional actor," Friedle explained. "He taught us how to ... You weren't late, you knew your lines. He never treated us like we were kids. 'I don't care if you're 11, we're colleagues. Be on the straight and narrow.' But also very nurturing, because he was a child actor too, so he knew what we were going through."
Perhaps the best part about Daniels on the set?
"He didn't mind when you would say K.I.T.T.," said McGee, referring to Daniels' role as the voice of Michael Knight's autonomous, artificially intelligent car on the iconic '80s series Knight Rider.
"That's what we knew him from, the voice of Knight Rider," Friedle added. "Of course, that's what we're going to say. We always say, our executive producer's name was Michael Jacobs and [Daniels] would go, 'Michael,' And we'd all go, 'K.I.T.T!!!'"
RELATED CONTENT:
