Rider Strong Recalls “Passing Out” After Being Forced To Work 18-Hour Days As A Child Star: “I Was Unhappy”

Boy Meets World actors Rider Strong, Will Friedle, and Danielle Fishel got to catch up with their own “real life Mr. Feeny” during a recent episode of their podcast, Pod Meets World, which featured an appearance from a former teacher who educated them while they were young, working actors.

Wesley Staples played a unique role in the crew as a studio teacher for the cast. Outside of providing regular lessons, studio teachers are also tasked with protecting the young actors’ welfare during production. Strong and Fishel, who were still teenagers when production on Boy Meets World started, praised Staples for always looking out for their wellbeing on set.

Strong recalled one particular instance he worked on a production in Australia where his studio teacher didn’t step in to help him.

“When I worked in Australia when I was 11, they didn’t have state protection. They didn’t have a welfare worker,” he said. “The studio teacher in Australia turned out to be a background actor who they just gave a bump to also be my studio teacher, and they worked me so hard.”

The actor said there was one day on set where he was still filming at one in the morning after working for almost 18 hours straight.

“I was cold, we were freezing,” he recalled. “And I just remember the director being like: ‘C’mon, Rider! You can find that inner warmth, let’s do this!’” Strong said he felt like he was “passing out falling asleep” from the exhaustion.

But he specifically recalled how the difficult working conditions affected his mom, who was present on set with him but did not feel like she had the power to step in, even as the situation became dangerous.

“Obviously I was unhappy, but I think the hardest was on my mom because she was in a position where her son wants to be an actor, her son’s getting to be in this show, so she doesn’t want to shut down the production,” he said.

That’s where studio teachers are supposed to step in, he claimed.

“You need that person; you need that somebody with that authority who says: ‘Time’s up, you’ve worked nine and a half hours, that’s it,'” he told Staples, who completely agreed.

Staples recounted multiple moments from his career in which he had to step in to protect a young actor, including one where he got a studio fined for filming a scene with a young girl and a live bear despite his refusals. He even recalled another instance where he went against Macaulay Culkin‘s mother and pulled him from speaking to the press after he noticed the child actor “was tired.”

“They went off and the makeup ladies turned to me and said: ‘Oh my god, thank you so much,’” he said. “Everybody sees. Everybody on the set sees what’s going on.”

The Boy Meets World stars have spoken about the ups and downs of filming the hit ABC show, from pay disparities to filming “horribly uncomfortable” kissing scenes, but Staples was one of many members of the crew whom the actors said really looked out for them when they were young.

“We have two duties: to teach and welfare. The state empowers us to do that,” Staples said. “We’re a necessary evil, producers have to hire us.”