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“Pod Meets World” took a break by recapping “Boy Meets World” with its latest episode.
During the February 19 Podcast, Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle were joined by family therapist Kati Morton for an important discussion about Brian Peck, a guest star on season five of “Boy Meets World.” According to the episode’s official description, the group discusses “the difficult topics of grooming, child sexual abuse, and its effects on victims.”
The episode began with Fishel explaining that since everyone agreed to be open and honest, even when they felt uncomfortable, about their experiences, they found it necessary to share Peck’s story. Additionally, he noted that he recently contacted Friedle and Strong to request a statement about Peck. While he didn’t explain why, it’s likely because Peck is part of the upcoming docuseries “Quiet on Set” that looks into alleged past abuse that occurred on multiple Nickelodeon sets.
Instead of releasing a statement, the podcast co-hosts decided to tell their stories in a full episode since Peck would be appearing soon. They recap each episode of “Boy Meets World,” the co-hosts list the guest stars, and in Season 5, Peck appeared in two episodes.
In 2004, four years after “Boy Meets World” ended, Peck was convicted of sexually abusing an unknown Nickelodeon child actor. He spent 16 months in prison after being charged with eight counts of sexual abuse.
Friedle says he became close to Peck right around the time he joined the show.
“I didn’t really go to parties. I didn’t really do those things. But I was working a lot after ‘Boy Meets World,’ and this guy had ingratiated himself so much into my life that I took him to three shows after ‘Boy Meets World,’” he explained. “This was the kind of thing where the person hosting was a cool, fun guy who was really good at his job, who you wanted to hang out with… I saw him every day, I hung out with him every day. , spoke with him. every day.”
For Strong, they also often hung out “all the time” outside of work, even though Peck was almost 20 years older.
According to the presenters, although they sometimes couldn’t remember the name of a substitute, that was because there were boundaries separating them from the main cast. However, Peck had no such limits.
“During all the years that I had understudies, no one that I remember regularly went to lunch with the cast members. But this person did and part of it is because, when he arrived on set, he was extremely charming. They were very nice. They made a lot of jokes,” Fishel said. “They also, due to their many years of experience working in the entertainment industry, knew other famous and very successful children and young people and spoke regularly about them.”
Plus, he was gay and the young cast members didn’t care. “The other adults on set, who maybe could or should have said, ‘Why are you going to lunch with this guy?’ ‘Why is this guy going to Rider’s house for a party?’ There was probably a part of them that didn’t say it because he was afraid it would be taken as homophobia, rather than ‘This is a boundary, gay or not.’ This is a boundary between adults and children,’” Fishel said. “And so I also think that’s important in Rider and Will’s story, about why he became such good friends with you two. And I did have lunch with him a couple of times, but only because someone else invited me… He didn’t really make any effort to get to know me. He was not so ingratiated with my life. “I never heard from him again after the show ended.”
When Peck was charged in 2003, he called Friedle and was crying while “instantly telling him it wasn’t his fault, it was clearly his victim’s fault.” At first, Friedle believed him. “My instinct initially was: ‘My friend, this cannot be. It has to be the other person’s fault. The story makes a lot of sense because of the way it is told.”
Friedle had just finished filming a movie, playing a role that Peck had gotten him when he wasn’t auditioning because of his anxiety. In a way, she felt indebted to him. Freidle tells Peck’s version of the story, stating that he He had been manipulated and taken advantage of, giving in to a younger person who had been trying several times. “In the end, he was the saint,” Friedle recalled.
Neither Friedle nor Strong knew the seriousness of the case: he was convicted of lewd act on a child and oral copulation with a person under 16 years of age.
“He didn’t say that nothing had happened. So when we heard about this case and learned something about it, it was always in the context of: ‘I did this, I’m guilty.’ I will receive whatever punishment the government determines, but I am a victim of jailbait. There was this hot guy! I just did this and he is a minor. And we buy that story.” Rider recalled. “I never heard about the other things because, back then, you couldn’t Google what people were accused of. So, in retrospect, he was making a deal and admitting one thing, which is all he admitted to us, but it seems like he was being accused of a series of crimes that we didn’t know about.”
Peck then asked Strong and Friedle to support him in court, which they did.
“We’re sitting in that courtroom on the wrong side of everything… The victim’s mother turned around and said, ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you. And that doesn’t change what you did to my son,’” Friedle explained. “I sat there wanting to die. It was like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ It was horrible in every way.”
Strong and Friedle wrote letters to the judge supporting Peck. “They didn’t tell us the whole story, but that doesn’t change the fact that we did it,” Friedle said. “I still can’t find the words to describe all the things I feel inside of me.”
Strong said Peck used to be called “the Forrest Gump of Hollywood” because he knew everyone and constantly mentioned names to show how connected he was. When she ran into him about seven years ago, she noticed him for the first time.
“I went to a party and he was there. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life because I saw him, I hadn’t seen him in years, and he immediately started talking to me like they were old friends or whatever. “It felt like an out-of-body experience where I was talking to him and I finally got to hear the name,” Strong said. “All these names, and suddenly I could see this constellation, this network that this person was laying. The story he was telling me was nonsense but what he was letting me know was that he was with famous people who validated him and put him in a category of Hollywood royalty. He did it constantly when we were on the set of ‘Boy Meets World’ and I never saw it because it was so simple. Here I was like at this party and I had to leave, I was very scared.”
Friedle, for his part, hasn’t seen Peck in almost 20 years. But he’s still affected by what he and Strong went through.
“There is a real victim here. And he turned us against the victim to where we are now on his team. That is what, for me, I remember as my eternal, loving shame for all of this,” she said. “Being fooled by someone who is a good actor and a manipulator, I could attribute it to being young and that’s just how it is. It is awful. I’m going to use that for my growth as a human being, but when there’s a real victim involved and now I’m on the abuser’s side, that’s what I can’t get over and haven’t been able to get over. .”
Towards the end of the episode, Strong admits that he feels “very uncomfortable” performing the episode for multiple reasons.
“I still feel like we shouldn’t ruin this man’s life anymore. I still feel that. I think there are many layers to that. It just makes me feel very uncomfortable,” he said. “The fact that this person, this convicted child sex offender, worked on ‘Boy Meets World,’ isn’t even one of the top 100 facts about ‘Boy Meets World’ in the universe. After this, it will be the question. It’s going to rise to the top of one of the most talked about facts about us and our show… I don’t like the idea that we’re affecting the cultural memory of ‘Boy Meets World’ with this. “That’s a shame because I feel like, in my experience with ‘Boy Meets World,’ it’s not that big of a part.”
While Friedle admitted that he didn’t want to have the conversation at first either, for him it has almost nothing to do with the show. “This has to do with me now, as a 47-year-old man, and the person I have become, and this affected me as a person. It didn’t affect the show in any way,” he said. “It doesn’t affect my memory of the show in any way. In fact, most of my memories of this person and this manipulation occurred after ‘Boy’ for me. So I think people will disconnect the two.”
Overall, the group hopes that by listening to the episode, at least one person who is being manipulated or groomed can feel supported.
Variety Peck has been contacted for comment.