Maitland Ward ‘Uneasy’ After ‘Jarring’ Pod Meets World Confrontation With Danielle Fishel (Exclusive)

Ward sat down with Danielle Fishel and her co-hosts Will Friedle and Rider Strong to reminisce about her character Rachael McGuire for the podcast’s latest episode, but what started as a friendly catchup quickly took a turn when Fishel questioned why Ward “hates” her former castmates.

TooFab spoke with Ward on Monday, after the episode dropped, where she shared more of her side of the story and dished on what she thinks went wrong.

“I’m a little — I won’t say shaken up or anything, I’m just surprised by the whole situation, and I’ve had a little time to reflect on it since I did the show a week and a half go,” Ward began. “It just felt uneasy to have people that you called friends — especially in the past, I thought Danielle was my friend — I can see that she did not like me, and she has harbored not liking me through the years, but it’s sad to me too.”

While Fishel accused Ward of coming onto the show just to drum up ratings, Ward told TooFab that she in no way came on to cause any kind of controversy.

“Let me I just wanna say I did not come on that show to create controversy and to drum anything up at that time,” Ward maintained, “And I think fans can see that. The first part of the show was very friendly, that’s why it was such a weird switch at the end.”

Ward said while she’s hurt by the comments Fishel made, she’s equally taken aback by Friedle, who she’s had a longstanding friendship with in the years since she joined the show in season 6, and since the pair reunited on Girl Meets World in 2015.

“I’m a little hurt by Will in the way that he presented it to me that it was gonna be fun, people were looking forward to it, and we were just gonna you talk it out — not even talk it out, just have conversations about the show and stuff,” she explained. “I thought like any problems we had, we would talk in a conversational way, so I wasn’t expecting such a jarring shift. It was like, all of a sudden she was Topanga and then she switched into Regina George.”

Ward continued, “It’s just really hurtful to come on a show and with people you’ve known, almost your whole life, and then she proceeded to ask me, ‘Did I hate them,’ and I say, ‘No, you hate me.'”

The saga behind the women questioning whether they like one another or not started back in 2013, when Ward sent a message to Fishel on Facebook, only to later realize they were no longer friends on the platform.

For her part, Fishel said she didn’t even see the message until 2022, as she barely checks in on or uses her Facebook account. It was at that time that Friedle shared that he’d spoken to Ward about possibly having her as a guest on their new podcast.

It was during that discussion that Friedle clued Fishel in that she’d left Ward hanging for nearly a decade, which led Fishel to ask Friedle if he could try to get Ward’s number so she could reach out. Ward allegedly said the two could talk things out the podcast, adding it would “rock the stats.”

But when all that was brought up on the podcast, Ward said thinks got a little murky.

“She tells me the whole like conflict about the Facebook friending back-and-forth like, ‘Did you unfriend her?’ She did. Then goes, ‘Could I have done it within 10 years? Yes, probably, but it was probably part of like a group garbage dump,’ so that’s great,” said Ward, “and then after that the letter that I sent her, ‘Oh, it’s probably stuck in my garbage somewhere in the Facebook universe,’ and I’m like, OK well that makes me feel really great that that’s how you’re coming on to tell me this … basically you hate me more than I even realized.”

“And it’s sad, because I have done nothing over the years — and I’m talking about years 20 years, however long it’s been — but be nice to her, and she even insinuated that me inviting her to my wedding was out of the blue, and like I was trying to do something about that. This was 18 years ago, and I really genuinely liked her and wanted her to come to the wedding,” Ward continued.

“It’s just disheartening in many ways because I wish it would’ve been a time where we could’ve talked about it and just had a nice conversation,” Ward added.

As for the claims Ward made regarding Boy Meets World star, Ben Savage and show creator Michael Jacobs, Wards sticks by her belief that some of Fishel’s animosity towards her comes from her repairing her relationship with the latter.

“I know they are always against Michael Jacobs and Ben and they know that I am on good terms with both of them, and actually, I had problems with Michael and Disney, back in the day, and I’d written about it in my book and talked about it,” Ward recalled. “And after my book was out, Michael came to me and we had a long conversation, and we really talked about things, and I really appreciate that, and I think that that meant so much to it, and we’re in such a good place now because of that, and we continued to have an open conversation about both of what we were feeling, and what was going on at the time.”

She continued, “And I think we really came to a knowledge about, listen, the late 90s and early 2000s were a terrible time for women in Hollywood. It was the mindset of the time.”

“I don’t think that they came to me in that kind of place,” she said of Fishel, Friedle and Strong. “And then accusing me of trying to come on the show, stir things up … I think it was disingenuous of them for two-and-a-half years ago, for Will to come to me, and say, ‘Hey, will you be in our press release when we’re launching the podcast? We really want you to be part of the initial launch,’ and then it’s two-and-a-half years later until they make an overture for me to come on.”

While the conversation didn’t exactly go as she would’ve hoped, Ward — who has since transitioned to a career in the adult film industry — said she’s still glad she was able to clear the air for the BMW fans.

“I’m glad that I am able to clear the air for the fans. I think people thought I was making up, or exaggerating the fact that she didn’t like me. I think it’s kind of demonstrated now that there’s something there that she doesn’t like about me,” Ward maintained. “And I wish we could talk further about it. I’m very open to talking further about it with her. But I wish it was done a different way on the podcast. I wish it would’ve been be done in a more conversational, respectful way to each other. It was out of nowhere.”

As for why Fishel approached her in the way that she did, Ward said she thinks it’s because her former costar has been “harboring some stuff against me” — adding that she can almost pinpoint it the release of her 2022 memoir, My Escape from Hollywood: Unapologetic, Unfiltered, and Unashamed, where she first made the claim that Fishel didn’t like her.

“I didn’t even realize how deep it was, but I always could tell that she didn’t like me. And I know she was in a bad place at the time of Girl Meets World, and and I did not realize the depths of that, so I feel bad about that, but I don’t know where she’s coming [from], because I wasn’t gonna come on the show and do that. I wasn’t gonna come charge at her,” she added. “I do things wrong too in relationships and friendships, I’m not saying that I’m perfect at all, but I would never have gone at her like that, never in public like that.”

And though Ward tells TooFab she hasn’t been contacted by Fishel, Friedle or Strong since the recording, she would take up the group’s offer to return to the podcast and find some resolve in the matter.

“I am not a coward about these things and I would do it. I definitely think there’s more to be said on the matter, and I think it has to be approached in a more adult way,” Ward shared. “There are big problems in the world, and we were we were discussing at length whether or not she unfriended me on Facebook. These were kind of petty matters in a lot of ways, but I think we can have a deeper conversation.”

“And especially, I’d like to hear Will’s point of view too, because that was that the most personally hurtful, ’cause I didn’t see that coming, that he knew about it or anything,” she added.

TooFab has reached out to Fishel for comment.