Will Friedle Almost Walked Away From Boy Meets World After Season 3
Following the ending of TGIF hit series "Boy Meets World" in 2000, actor Will Friedle switched gears from live-action acting to voice acting work. It started before "Boy Meets World" actually ended, with Friedle voicing the character of Terry McGinnis, the next generation of Batman from the animated series "Batman Beyond." In 2002 he also started voicing Ron Stoppable on the popular Disney Channel animated series "Kim Possible." He continues to focus on voice acting to this day, mostly in DC and Marvel projects such as the animated "Guardians of the Galaxy" series where he voiced Starlord, and "DC Super Hero Girls" where he played, among others, Aquaman and Lex Luthor.
In an interview with Temple of Geek, Friedle was asked if he ever had any problems with typecasting after playing such an iconic role as Eric Matthews on "Boy Meets World," and Friedle explained that voice-acting saved him from being typecast too much. "That's the joy of animation is you always get to do something that you probably wouldn't get a chance to do live-action. So, I mean nobody was ever going to cast me as Batman. ... You can be a little typecast, but it's also just doing animated voices is such a joy that I don't care if I get the same role over and over again forever in animation." Friedle even launched the podcast "I Hear Voices" with his "Kim Possible" co-star Christy Carlson Romano that's dedicated to interviewing voice actors about their experiences in the industry.
But before he became known for his voice acting work, Friedle almost ditched his role in "Boy Meets World" after only three seasons, almost killing his career in both live-action and animation before it really even took off.
Will Friedle almost moved to Amsterdam after Season 3 of Boy Meets World
Will Friedle is also one of the co-hosts of "Pod Meets World," a podcast he hosts with "Boy Meets World" co-stars Rider Strong and Danielle Fishel as they discuss their experiences filming the show. A recent episode featured Jason Marsden, who appeared on several episodes of "Boy Meets World" and who has remained good friends with Friedle ever since their time on the show together. In the interview, Marsden talked about how Friedle almost quit "Boy Meets World."
The drama started when Friedle and Marsden took their first trip to Amsterdam, and following that, Friedle returned to Amsterdam on his own. "I would check in on him every so often. We didn't have pagers or nothing. You'd go to a payphone to call me and check in and you were like 'I don't know man. I don't know if I'm going to come back. I'm going to stay here.'" Marsden flew out to Amsterdam to talk some sense into Friedle and managed to drag his friend back.
Friedle and the rest of the "Boy Meets World" cast must have really enjoyed Amsterdam because their frequent trips to the country have come up a few times. In 2013, Rider Strong tweeted about a trip he took to Amsterdam in 1996 where the only things he knew how to say in Dutch were his lines from the episode "B & B's B 'N' B" in which Shawn (Strong) and Cory (Ben Savage) open a bed and breakfast in Mr. Feeny's (William Daniels) house. It's hard to imagine how the phrases "Yes, in fact, everything you see is for sale" and "Throw it in the air and see for yourself how light it is" helped them get by in Amsterdam.