Maitland Ward Hid From ‘Boy Meets World’ EP After Launching Porn Career: “I Didn’t Want To Give Him The Satisfaction”

Former Boy Meets World actress-turned-porn star Maitland Ward is reflecting on how Hollywood — specifically, her Boy Meets World and ’90s sitcom peers — reacted to the news of her career shift. While some were supportive, Ward claims others dodged her like a bullet.

In an opinion piece published by The Daily Beast, the adult actress, who played Rachel McGuire on the classic family comedy, said her Boy Meets World co-stars “haven’t come out against me or tried to shame me, but for the most part they haven’t defended me publicly either. I guess I’m an elephant in the room.”

However, she added that it wasn’t true of Will Friedle, who starred alongside her as Eric Matthews throughout the duration of Boy Meets World. While promoting her first “huge porn feature film” at a comic con, she ran into her former co-star, explaining that he didn’t ask her the typical (and crude) questions she got both from being a child actress and, now, a porn star.

“What he asked me was if I was happy … and I assured him that I was,” she said. “He gave me that same big Will bear hug.”

She added, “He told me he was happy for me, and though he never wanted to see anything I was doing, he wished me great success with it.”

While Friedle was supportive of the actress’ new career path, she couldn’t say the same for Michael Jacobs, the executive producer of Boy Meets World. Ward recalled the time she hid from him and his wife when she saw them out on the street.

“I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being able to give me that smug, fatherly look and tell me all the reasons he thought I had failed, when I was succeeding on my own terms more than ever,” she said, adding that to him, she had “ruined the image of the show.”

Ward claimed that Jacobs wanted her “forever tied to the squeaky-clean, wholesome mirage he created” for her.

“Me, living on my own terms, is a face outside of a cage he couldn’t look at,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to give Michael the satisfaction to make any commentary on my life and how I chose to live it. I finally took my place of power in the world and I wouldn’t allow him even a tiny crumb of it back.”

As for the rest of Hollywood, the actress went on to claim that Matthew Lillard, who starred alongside her in the indie film Dish Dogs, disappeared from her life after he found out she did porn, giving “no explanations” and “no goodbyes.”

“Terry Crews, who I starred in White Chicks with, did that too,” she explained. “But he’s been an anti-porn crusader for years, so I am the target of his cause.”

Ward also remembered the reactions from other celebrities who made their mark in the ’90s, such as Elizabeth Berkley, who starred in her own NC-17 film Showgirls. She wrote about the time she saw the Saved by the Bell actress while leaving the grocery store.

“I realized [Berkley] was giving me the same reaction she wanted from everyone years earlier — that mix of befuddlement and shock, and an underlying awe that you’ve done something others only dream of daring to do,” Ward said.