[Via shineon-media.com...]
We have to admit, we weren’t too thrilled when the news about a “Boy Meets World” spin-off…or should we say sequel was announced. Thankfully, executive producer Michael Jacobs recently chatted with The Hollywood Reporter and shared some things that put our minds at ease and make us say, “bring it on!”
Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel are on board to reprise their roles as Cory & Topanga and it was just announced that Spy Kids 4 star Rowan Blanchard
will play their daughter Riley. No word yet on who will play their
older son and Riley’s bff, but we are more curious to know if other BMW
stars will make cameos or even be regulars. After the rumors of the show
started, Rider Strong aka Shawn, said he had not been approached
to be a part of the show, but Jacobs assures fans that he could still
make an appearance.
“When Rider said that he was not approached about being a part of the
show, there actually was no official show,” Jacobs shared. “[At the
time] it was an idea that Gary Marsh, Adam Bonnett, Corey Marsh and the
Disney Channel people called me up asking if I would be interested in
doing this. It just got an official greenlight for pilot. I didn’t want
to talk to everybody about something that was only a discussion. Then
the world reacted and I got a bajillion phone calls. Rider and Will
Friedle and all of the cast said, “What is this? We thought we were
done!” We sat down with them and talked about what their roles on the
show may be. Whoever wants to be part of this show will be and whoever
wants to move on will. The most important thing is to see what the show
is and then see what their part in it will be. Will Friedle said, “I
will be at every taping.” Everybody is quite attached to it. The bottom
line is: Will Rider or Will be a cast member? Will they put in
appearances? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see.”
We have our fingers crossed that all of our favorites from the
original will pop up. Want to read even more of Jacobs’ Q&A? Read
the full Q&A inside…
Why about 11-year-old Rowan Blanchard made her right to play Cory and Topanga’s daughter?
The thing about casting that has changed is that there were tapes that
came in from all over the country, every city and town. When you say
this was a national casting search, this really was. We looked at just
about everybody. We had it in mind that she should be in seventh grade,
13 years old and that she should be representative of the typical
13-year-old girl. That’s basically how we set about Boy Meets World. We
brought in finalists, girls we thought would be absolutely lovely in the
role, and we had a test session. When we were listening to the girls
and the dialog coming out of their mouths, we realized something was
wrong. The girls seemed a little too old in aspect. We were doing a
coming-of-age story and you can’t cast somebody who has already come of
age. The cost of coming of age has gotten a little younger. I remembered
Rowan and how I felt about her when she first came in. I felt like it
was Cory Matthews walking into the room.
What were the first reactions to her? I put her in
front of Gary Marsh, Adam Bonnett, Corey Marsh and all of the people at
Disney Channel and they immediately said that they were very intrigued
by this. It was our first breath of real honesty, that this was a real
girl who was actually growing up. We came to love her quirkiness and
naturalness. Rowan instructed us that this is the show we should be
doing.
What’s the appeal of doing a project like this right now, 13 years after Boy Meets World went off the air?
The appeal to me was exactly the same appeal that I had in doing the
original, which is that I look around at the landscape and I look at my
children and what is on television for them, and there are very few
shows that are like this, what we aspire this show to be. I think of Boy
Meets World and I think of Wonder Years and I think of Happy Days,
which I grew up [with]. The thing that delineates this show is that I
don’t want this to be anything except the natural experience of actually
growing up in this current world. I’m reading a lot about, “Is this
girl going to be a singer? Is this girl going to aspire to be an
actress?” This is a girl who is going to aspire to put one foot in front
of the other and to try and understand the confusion that is her life.
That’s what I think becomes real about this show. The stories we intend
on doing are stories about a real girl who is coming of age. The beauty
of this show is the girl will have two parents whom the world has
already watched come of age and their natural confusion in the next step
of Cory and Topanga’s own evolution: being parents. I’m looking at what
the condition of the world is right now for kids who are growing up and
if we can offer the same sort of guidance and entertainment that Boy
Meets World offered, then the show is a good thing to do right now.
From your perspective, Girl Meets World is filling a void that that you believe exists in TV?
Since Boy Meets World went off the air, I haven’t seen this kind of
programming on the air. That was reflected in the reaction, which I am
extraordinarily grateful for. As soon as we talked about redoing the
show, the response was so overwhelming and positive that no matter what
happens with this show, myself, the staff, Ben and Danielle are
incredibly gratified. It’s rare that in your own lifetime you get to
hear positive response in this volume about the work that you’ve done.
Boy never left the air. It ran on Disney Channel, it ran on ABC Family,
it’s running on MTV2, you can turn on the television any time of day and
catch an episode. There has to be the realization that the public does
want this type of honest show or at least the aspiration to be honest in
its characters.
Do you have fears that viewers may gravitate more toward Cory and Topanga, who I assume will act in support, than Riley?
I think that’s a formula. I don’t want this show to be a part of a
formula. Is there a lead? Are there supporting characters? Boy Meets
World was always an ensemble. There is pretty much equal interest about
who you would naturally term “supporting characters.” Ben and Danielle
would be the first to say that Boy was always an ensemble that Ben was
in the middle of with all of the stories spun out from him. Will Cory
and Topanga be supporting characters? All of the characters will have
their feature stories and will be paid close attention to, so hopefully
the audience will love the characters the way they loved the characters
on Boy. You’re going to be seeing a lot of Riley Matthews because she’s
the point of view of this show but what influences her are all of the
characters in her life. You are going to see very equal attention paid
to Cory and Topanga and all of the other supporting cast as you would
naturally term it.
How will the show be different than Boy Meets World
considering it’s for Disney Channel, which has a different target
audience than ABC? That is not going to influence what the tone
and quality will be of the show. I’m hoping parents who grew up with
the original Boy Meets World will put their children in front of this
because they know what we’re going to do. The world is different today.
Even in the 20 years since Boy first premiered, there have been so many
changes in the lives of children and how they grow and what they have
been exposed to on the television screen, the movie screen and the
computer screen. That influenced why we couldn’t cast a 13-year-old
because it seemed to me we were coming into the middle. It seemed to me
there wasn’t much to learn at 13, which was sad to me in a way. What I’m
hoping is that the freshness of this will be a girl at her absolute
cusp of being able to be influenced by these surrounding forces. Cory,
who has been nothing but confused all his life, will try to impress upon
his daughter that he knows what he’s doing now and she will see right
through that. That’s going to be one of the primary relationships within
the show. Topanga’s observation and realization that neither of them
know truly what they’re doing and it’s not an easy world to raise a
child in is what makes this show great for right now.
Would you want this to run on Friday nights like Boy Meets World did?
That’s not up to me. The people at Disney are extraordinarily bright at
what they do. They will put the show at exactly the right place, at
exactly the right time. My concern is when we get a time slot, our show
is ready and we hit the ground running and the audience gets exactly
what the audience wants.
How many versions of Girl Meets World did you toy with before landing on this one?
This was it. Gary, Adam, Corey and their staff spoke to me about doing
it. I spoke to my wife. I said, “Sequels are very tough. I don’t want to
do anything at all that would hurt or tarnish whatever legacy the
original had.” This was before the world reacted and demanded that I
don’t. [Laughs] Now I’m under absolute command of the world and I’m
paying very strict attention on what the show will be. The idea I came
up with is the idea we’re going forward with. Girl Meets World can be
told on two levels: the coming of age of Riley Matthews and two parents
who haven’t quite come of age themselves
Is there anything that’s keeping you up at night? Are there
challenges you’re facing in terms of how to stay as true to your
original vision as possible? There is literally one thing
that’s keeping me up at night. Now that we’ve gotten the response – and
I’m reading a lot of it. I know this way lies madness. I know to read
Twitter and Tumblr, which I never did before, and everyone at Disney is
taking great stock in articles that say “these are the five things we
demand from Girl Meets World,” “these are the ways the show has to go.”
If we do a redo of the original series, that’s no good. Nobody wants
that. The world [my kids are] growing up in is a far tougher world; it’s
not the same world Cory Matthews met. I certainly don’t know that it’s
as kid-friendly. It’s far more complex than it used to be because of
their immediate access technologically, about things they should and
shouldn’t. The thing that keeps me up is will I actually be able to
communicate to a vast audience the joy of growing up with a bit more
innocent confusion and a bit less wanting to run off the cliff and
becoming much too old much too fast? If I can do that, then this is a
real contribution.
