Matthew Lawrence Says Justin Timberlake Thought He Was 'So Mean' When *NSYNC Visited the “Boy Meets World ”Set
Lawrence, Will Friedle and Rider Strong joked that they didn’t appreciate the attention the boy banders lavished on co-star Danielle Fishel
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Matthew Lawrence and Justin Timberlake in 1998It seems the male cast members of Boy Meets World weren’t particularly in sync with a certain boy band when they visited the set of the beloved ’90s sitcom.
On the most recent episode of rewatch podcast Pod Meets World, Matthew Lawrence joined hosts Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong to share memories of their time starring in Boy Meets World, including of *NSYNC’s frequent visits to the show’s set.
“I don't know if you guys — well, of course, you remember this — but when *NYSYNC kept coming over to the set?” Lawrence recalled. “I found out years later when I bumped into Justin [Timberlake] that he thought I was not very nice.”
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Will Friedle, Rider Strong and Matthew Lawrence in 1997“He didn't like me. And he flat out told me to my face,” Lawrence said, recalling an encounter he had with the “Cry Me a River” singer around the time that his debut solo album Justified was released in 2002. “I was a huge fan. I didn't have any recollection of this, and he was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Yeah, now you wanna be friends with me? You were so mean on the set.’ ”
Lawrence and Strong chalked Timberlake’s take on the actor up to Lawrence’s shyness.
“I was super shy,” Lawrence said, “and also, I had, you know, kind of a crush on Danielle. And these guys kept rolling up on set, like, trying to hit on her!”
“Just orbiting around Danielle in a constant circle,” Strong recalled.
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*NSYNC in 1999“I was wonder if you were gonna say it,” Fishel said, laughing. “I was like, I also know why he was probably a little sandoffish …”
“I remember us guys would always be like, ‘These dudes! Oh my god, they come around here…’ ” Strong recalled. “And we would watch Danielle, like, completely ignore all of us. We would, like, lose our sister. We would just lose her, and we'd be like, ‘Oh, god. She totally changes around them. She just totally changes.’ ”
Friedle joked that, despite her “one-in-five chance” of finding romance with a member of one of the biggest pop acts in the world at the time, Fishel “chose poorly.”
The actress famously dated Lance Bass for about a year while she was still starring in Boy Meets World, and the singer even escorted Fishel to her high school prom. Bass, of course, came out publicly as gay in 2006. On a 2022 episode of Pod Meets World, the pair said they were working on a film based on their teen romance.
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“I liked the comfort and security of knowing nothing was gonna happen!” Fishel joked of her relationship with Bass on this week’s episode of the podcast.
Friedle also remembered a hilarious moment on set with Timberlake involving a baby doll that stood in for newborn Joshua Matthews, younger brother to Friedle and Ben Savage’s characters.
“The thing I remember is you and I, one time, Matt, were hanging out. It must have been season 7. Like, they just had the baby, whenever the baby happened on the show. Because at one point, they gave us the baby the doll,” Friedle said. “I think it was Justin and Joey [Fatone] were there. I forget who it was, but I was just playing with the doll and putting the cigarette in its mouth and then, like, making it cough and, like, Justin just looked at me, like, ‘Are you actually crazy?’ ”
“He's like, ‘Dude, this is insane,’ ” Friedle recalled. “I'm like, ‘Yeah. This is what we do. This is our day at work.’ ”
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