After Opening Up About “Boy Meets World”'s Troubling “Pay Disparity,” Danielle Fishel Just Revealed Exactly How Much She Made Per Episode

“I was considered a series regular in Season 2, but I still didn’t get to do every episode,” Danielle explained on the pod. “I was a series regular who was guaranteed 13 [episodes], and I think I ended up doing 19 out of 22 or something.”

She then told listeners: “We’ve talked about it before privately, but if you guys knew the pay disparity, even after I became a series regular… The excuse was: ‘We didn’t know you were going to be on the show, we weren’t anticipating you,’ but by Season 2, you did know. By Season 2, I was accounted for.”

“I get that in Season 1, I wasn’t part of the budget,” she added. “You weren’t anticipating having another series regular, but by Season 2… That excuse should go out the window, and then Season 3 rolled around, and they were using the same excuse.”

“I had to threaten to not show up to a table read,” Danielle revealed. “My dad was not having it. My dad and Judy Savage were doing the negotiations with ABC, or Disney, and they said to me: ‘You have to not go,’ and I was sobbing: ‘I have to go, it’s my job, you’re going to lose this job for me.’”

In fact, Danielle recalled being so concerned about losing her dream job that she warned her family that she would never speak to them again if she got fired due to the boycott. While it is evident that this wasn’t the case, Danielle did not go into detail about how the pay issue was resolved at this time. 

“You represented Rider, who obviously had a lot more experience than I did, but you knew what they were paying Rider and so you had a number in mind that you were trying to get me to,” Danielle began.

“And I remember I really had a hard time because somebody had put you on the show at a really low number,” Judy — who wasn’t Danielle’s agent when she was cast in the show — recalled. “I had a very hard time getting them to increase it.”

“It came right down to the wire,” the star went on. “I was very nervous I was going to lose my job. I didn’t want to lose the job, I was willing to do it for whatever, you know? I was like: ‘Whatever, I don’t get to see this money anyway! It’s going into an account! Please just don’t lose this job for me!’ And I remember crying on the phone to you and my dad, saying: ‘I’m going to trust you, but just please don’t lose this job for me.’ And you saying: ‘I’m not going to.’”

Judy admitted that having the support of Danielle’s dad made all of the difference, and Danielle remembered him telling her that she “cannot allow them to walk all over” her.

“They acted as though making $7,500 by Season 4 was some gift,” Danielle added of the show’s producers. “But you knew what everyone else was making, and you knew that’s not fair, not equitable. And still, never, in the full seven seasons, we never did get me to a place where I was matched to what anyone else made.”

“You and I went favored nations and kind of just went: ‘Hey, if we band together, then what are they going to do? Fire us both?’” Will recalled. “And we looked at each other and went: ‘Well then, they’ll fire us both.’ We were both kind of like: ‘OK!’”

“But there’s a power in that,” Will added. “There’s a power in you and I kind of holding hands and going: ‘Alright, see what happens,’ and it worked!”

Judy then explained that Danielle couldn’t join them for this tactic because she had started at such a lower rate to them. 

She said: “They hired all these people, and it was such a big hit — they paid them all, like, $35,000 for the first one, and then for the second one, I think we got $500,000. On the third one, we got it up to a million dollars, and I couldn’t believe it. I thought: ‘Oh my god, I have struck gold.’”

Judy also revealed that while working with Shailene Woodley, she secured one million for one movie, and three million for another.