Boy Meets World Star Fired For A Disturbing Reason
Bonnie Morgan, the actress originally hired to portray Topanga in Boy Meets World says she was fired because she wasn't pretty enough.
Actress Bonnie Morgan didn’t mince words when she appeared recently on the Pod Meets World podcast. According to Deadline, the actress was originally hired to play Topanga Lawrence on the popular ’90s sitcom Boy Meets World but was let go from the series before a pilot was filmed. Morgan revealed to hosts Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle that she was fired from the role for not being “pretty enough.”
The actress explained that she had three callbacks before finally being cast as the main female lead on Boy Meets World. After each callback, Morgan says she and the show’s creators would talk about the character, and that small changes were even made to the script to reflect her input.
Needless to say, Morgan felt a deep connection to the character.
Bonnie Morgan, the actress originally hired to portray Topanga in Boy Meets World says she was fired because she wasn’t pretty enough.
Morgan went so far as to mention that her parents were married in Topanga Canyon, giving her an even stronger connection to the role. Unfortunately, not everyone shared her feelings on the matter. Despite being assured by her agent that Boy Meets World creator Michael Jacobs “loved” her for the part, some of the other cast and crew felt differently.
Bonnie said she felt a hostile vibe on her first day on set. She described all the adults as being “short” with her but tried to shake it off and get through the first table read. The read went so well that it lulled Morgan into a false sense of security, a sense that would soon be shattered.
“Ben Savage started poking me a little bit,” Morgan remembered. She went on to say that Savage added funny faces to his bit as a way to try and make Morgan break character. Morgan recalls that Ben’s distractions turned her into a “nervous wreck” and caused her to flub a line, causing Boy Meets World director David Trainer to snap at her to “Get it together!”
Morgan recalled having a “sweet line” at one point that Trainer told her to say “sweeter.” Morgan did as she was told, but the director still wasn’t satisfied. The actress described the director getting uncomfortably close to her and instructing her to say the line “Like you’re saying happy birthday.”
“At one point, I had a line. It was a sweet line, and David went, ‘I want you to say it sweeter …’ So, I said it sweeter, and he said, ‘No, I want you to say it.’ And he got really close to me, ‘Like you’re saying happy birthday,’”
Eventually, Morgan’s nightmarish first day ended, and she was able to retreat to the safety of her childhood home. Unfortunately, the horror of that first day followed her home. The next morning Morgan started her day with a phone call saying she was fired from Boy Meets World.
“The director said that I couldn’t take direction, which was one thing I’d never been accused of,” confessed Morgan. The young actress’s agent immediately called the Boy Meets World execs to find out the real reason Bonnie had been let go.
“The director didn’t think I was pretty enough. Literally did not think I was pretty enough,”
It didn’t take long for Morgan’s agent to find out that the series’ director didn’t find her attractive enough for the role of Topanga.
“The director didn’t think I was pretty enough. Literally did not think I was pretty enough,” Morgan recalled painfully. The actress was taken aback that a “grown man” could “lie” and tell her she was “untalented” just so that he wouldn’t have to admit that the real reason he didn’t want her was because she wasn’t up to his beauty standards.
Since that day, Morgan has seen exactly one episode of Boy Meets World. She tuned in for the pilot when it premiered on September 24, 1993, and that was all she could stomach. Under the circumstances, could anybody blame her?
