In a recent episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, the stars of the beloved ’90s sitcom Boy Meets World took a trip down memory lane and recalled an “intense” and “uncomfortable” makeout scene featuring former guest star Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Will Friedle, Rider Strong, and Danielle Fishel—who played Eric Matthews, Shawn Hunter, and Topanga Lawrence, respectively—were recapping the infamous season 5 episode “And Then There Was Shawn” when the topic of Friedle’s steamy on-screen kiss with then girlfriend Hewitt came up.
In the episode, which parodied various slasher films, Hewitt appeared as a new girl in school named “Jennifer Love Fefferman.” At one point, her character runs into Friedle’s Eric, leading to a passionate makeout session in the school hallway.
“[It was] way intense,” Fishel remembered of the scene, which she and her co-stars agreed felt a bit too hot to handle, even though the audience knew the actors were dating in real life at the time.
“I don’t know how even, like, none of us thought, ‘We know that they are a couple in real life, but does that still make sense as far as the show?'” Fishel said. For his part, Friedle was taken by surprise when revisiting the moment.
“I don’t remember it going that far, where I was like, ‘Oh my god,'” he said. “And then also just like kissing her neck and all that kind of stuff. It was seriously, like, wow, that’s uncomfortable.”
The trio surmised that the decision to include the steamy scene was likely made purely for comedic effect, but they all agreed it ultimately felt inappropriate given the audience’s lack of knowledge about the off-screen relationship.
“It’s like full-on making out,” Friedle said. “That is the most intense makeout we have on the seven years of the show, is right there in the hallway, then me kissing her neck while she’s trying to talk and all this. Like, we haven’t even said our names yet. It’s intense.” But as it turns out, there may have been an even more bizarre reason behind Hewitt’s memorable cameo.
According to Friedle, shortly after his relationship with Hewitt ended, Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs revealed to him that the real motivation for bringing the I Know What You Did Last Summer star onto the show was so he could have her character killed off in front of Friedle.
“Michael told me later that he claims that the reason he brought Love on was because I went to him, he and I were talking, and I said, ‘Oh, yeah, no, we’re going to be together forever,'” Friedle recalled on the podcast.
“And he’s like, ‘I knew you weren’t going to be, so I wanted to bring her on and kill her right in front of you. So you’d see that this is what…’ swear to God, this is what he told me, ‘I’m going to bring her on and kill her in front of you, so you’d see that this was just kind of another relationship that, you know, I knew as an adult that you weren’t going to be together forever, so I brought her on and I killed her.'”
Both Strong and Fishel were taken aback by Jacobs’ alleged reasoning, with Friedle even pointing out the irony of the creator’s belief that his relationship with Hewitt wouldn’t last, while the show was simultaneously telling a love story between Cory and Topanga that was meant to last forever.
“How about also the contradiction of him knowing we’d never be together, where Cory and Topanga are supposed to be together for the rest of their lives? It was so strange,” Friedle said. While the reasoning behind Hewitt’s unforgettable Boy Meets World cameo may have been a bit unorthodox, there’s no denying that the resulting scene remains one of the most memorable moments from the show’s seven-season run. Fans can relive all the nostalgia by streaming episodes of Boy Meets World now on Disney+.