Bonnie Morgan Says ‘Boy Meets World’ Fired Her For Not Being Pretty Enough

Actress Bonnie Morgan made some harsh accusations about Boy Meets World while joining the “Pod Meets World” podcast this week.

Morgan was the first young actress to be cast as Topanga Lawrence on the show, but was later fired and replaced by Danielle Fishel. Fishel now hosts the podcast with Rider Strong and Will Friedle.

“I had three callbacks,” said Morgan while speaking about her experience on the show. “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 recalls feeling a deep personal connection to the role, noting that the name Topanga “was out of my parents’ love history,” as they “got married in Topanga Canyon. It was the coolest thing ever.”

As the show moved forward, however, things seemingly began to change. She shared that her agent told her that show creator Michael Jacobs loved her for the part but there was a “power struggle,” and she was “stuck in the middle of it.”

She arrived on the set for her first day and immediately felt something was up.

“All the adults were short with me,” she said, describing 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 nailed the line and left the set that day 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 said she felt “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, she says she only watched the pilot then stopped.

Morgan ended up just fine in her acting career as she went on to later star as “Samara” in the horror film, The Ring. Fishel starred as Topanga for seven seasons on Boy Meets World.