Actress Bonnie Morgan shared some ugly truths on the podast “Pod Meets World.”
Early in her career, she was signed to play lead character Topanga Lawrence on the show “Boys Meets World.” She talked with podcast hosts and show cast members Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle about her experience on the show and how she felt when she was fired.
“I had three callbacks,” she said. “They kept bringing me back, and … it was rooms full of people every time. And, weirdly, every time I’d audition, we’d talk a lot. Every time I’d come back, the script would change slightly, it seemed, to things we had talked about.”
Morgan felt the role was deeply connected to her. Even the name Topanga “was out of my parents’ love history,” noting they “got married in Topanga Canyon. It was the coolest thing ever.”
But things were not all rainbows and unicorns when the show moved forward. She revealed she was told by her agent that show creator Michael Jacobs loved her for the part. However, there was apparently a “power struggle,” and she was “stuck in the middle of it.”
She arrived on the set for her first day and immediately felt a vibe.
She remembered “all the adults were short with me” and described the table read as “fun” but said things went downhill after that.
“Now, we’re blocking, and (Ben Savage) started poking at me a little bit. He would make faces and try to break me, and it worked. At this point, I was becoming a nervous wreck,” she recalled. “I couldn’t get his name, the opening line, Cory … and [director] David [Trainer] was just like, ‘Get it together.’ I’m trying to pull it together. I pulled it together in sheer fear, and Ben just kept doing this thing to crack me up.”
“At one point, I had a line. It was a sweet line, and David went, ‘I want you to say it sweeter …’ So, I said it sweeter, and he said, ‘No, I want you to say it.’ And he got really close to me, ‘Like you’re saying happy birthday,’” she added.
She passed that test, and left for hoem feeling things would get better.
The next morning, Morgan said the phone rang during breakfast. Her father answered the phone.
“He just said, ‘What? You’re kidding. They fired you. You’re fired,’” Morgan recalled.
“The director said that I couldn’t take direction, which was one thing I’d never been accused of.
“My agent immediately fought back on that one. It came out very quickly to my agent that the director didn’t think I was pretty enough. Literally did not think I was pretty enough. So, that meant that a grown man, a boss, could lie and tell me I was untalented because the fact was he didn’t think I was pretty.”
Morgan described feeling “shattered” when she heard the news, saying, “I don’t know a lot of adults that could take that one.”
When the show eventually aired, the only time she watched was when the pilot premiered.
Morgan recovered and went on to have a career, best known as “Samara” in the horror film, The Ring. Danielle Fishel went on to play the role of Topanga for seven seasons on “Boy Meets World.”