Boy Meets World's Original Topanga Actress Alleges She Was Fired for Not Being "Pretty Enough"

Before there was Danielle Fishel, there was Bonnie Morgan.

The Rings actress recently opened up for the first time about being cast and subsequently fired from Boy Meets World after one day of production, which her alleging her quick tenure on the sitcom came down to a decision from director David Trainer.

On a June 26 episode of the podcast Pod Meets World, co-hosted by Fishel and fellow Boy Meets World alumni Rider Strong and Will Friedle, Morgan explained the reason she was given for her firing, saying, "The director said I couldn't take direction, which is one thing I had never been accused of."

However, she says she soon learned that wasn't the case.

It came out very quickly to my agent that the director didn't think I was pretty enough," the contortionist and stunt performer continued. "Literally, did not think I was pretty enough. So that meant that a grown up, a man, a boss, could lie about me and tell me I was untalented because the fact was, he didn't think I was pretty."

E! News has reached out to Disney–ABC Domestic Television and Trainer for comment and has not heard back.

And Morgan—who was 12 years old when she was cast in Boy Meets World—recalled having the "weirdest day" of her life ahead of her firing, with her noting that Trainer was becoming frustrated with her acting.

"I was becoming a nervous wreck," she said. "David was just like, 'Get it together!'"

Still, Morgan remained optimistic about her job following the tough day. "I woke up the next morning to celebrate," she recalled. "I made myself blueberry pancakes, because I was so grown up, with a job now—and brought them up to my parents' bedroom to sit and eat them when the phone rang. My dad picked up the phone and he didn't wait to get off the phone. He just said, 'What? You're kidding. They fired you. You're fired.'"

Morgan continued, "I left my pancakes, ran into my room, took a blue blueberry-smelling marker and wrote, 'The worst day of my life' on my hummingbird calendar."

And the experience left her largely unable to watch Boy Meets World, with her admitting she's only seen one episode. "I saw the Barbie Mattel girl, a literal doll, as Topanga and it was like, 'Oh,'" she said. "It was the only time I would ever watch the show because I was not about torturing myself."

While Trainer has yet to comment on Morgan's claims, he previously spoke about feeling like she wasn't working in the role.

"There's sort of problems that you think you can solve," he said on Pod Meets World last year. "And then there's problems that you think you can't solve. And certainly, by working with her, she moved from one camp to the other. To the insoluble camp."

He added that he told colleagues at the time that she was a "disaster" in the role and they needed "to get rid of her."

 

Fishel, who ultimately went on to play Topanga in the sitcom and its sequel series Girl Meets World, has also reflected on her experience seeing Morgan on set having been cast in a minor role in the episode.

"She seemed to have trouble there. He'd give her a note telling her to change something, and she'd do it the exact same way again," she wrote in her 2014 memoir Normally This Would Be Cause for Concern. "On set the next day, she wasn't there. They had let her go, and the executive producer, Michael Jacobs, needed to find a new girl to play Topanga."

Ultimately, Morgan harbors no hard feelings toward Fishel over the role. "Yes, of course, for a long time, it was like, 'You took it from me,'" she told her on Pod Meets World. "But you were not in the corner, conniving and conspiring."

After Fishel responded in agreement, Morgan added, "The seat was open and you were ushered into it."

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