Jennifer Love Hewitt and Will Friedle on ‘Boy Meets World’ ABC
Jennifer Love Hewitt had the time of her life filming one of Boy Meets World’s most famous episodes with ex-boyfriend Will Friedle.
“Oh my god, I loved it,” Hewitt, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting her upcoming holiday projects. “First of all, I genuinely watched that show. I also truly believe that Will is one of the best comedic actors, like, ever. So brilliant and so funny. So I was really nervous to be on it [because I was a fan]. And I remember very clearly thinking, like, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to think that I can’t act and I’m not funny.”
Hewitt appeared on the season 5 episode “And Then There Was Shawn,” which saw Friedle’s character, Eric Matthews, get stuck in the school with brother Cory (Ben Savage), and friends Shawn (Rider Strong), Jack (Matthew Lawrence), Topanga (Danielle Fishel) and Angela (Trina McGee). Things take a turn for the worse when students, teachers and even the janitor start getting murdered by a mysterious masked killer.
Hewitt played Jennifer Love “Feffy” Fefferman on the sitcom’s meta-heavy 1998 episode — a play on her real name and ode to her I Know What You Did Last Summer character. After making out heavily against the lockers with Eric, challenging Angela to a “scream off” and making a reference to her own hit show Party of Five, Feffy ultimately meets her demise.
“Didn’t I get, like, hit by a bookcase or something?” Hewitt recalled to Us of how she was killed off. “Classic.”
While Hewitt admitted she was apprehensive about being able to nail the comedy — Party of Five was known for its more dramatic arcs — she ultimately had a great time shooting the episode.
“It was really fun and it was cute,” she told Us with a smile. “Like, I got to work with my boyfriend, I got to cheer him on! It was fun. I loved it.”
Hewitt and Friedle made their red carpet debut as a couple at the I Know What You Did Last Summer premiere in September 1997 before appearing on BMW together the following year. During a recent episode of his rewatch podcast, “Pod Meets World,” Friedle looked back at Hewitt’s appearance with cohosts Strong and Fishel and cringed over the duo’s hot and heavy makeout scene.
“I don’t remember it going that far. … It was seriously like, ‘Wow, that’s uncomfortable,’” Friedle recalled. “It was super intense, and I’ve had people even say to me like, ‘Oh, when I was a kid, I didn’t realize you guys were together.’ So it was just like, what the hell is going on? That is the most intense makeout we have on the seven years of the show is right there in the hallway. Then kissing her neck while she’s trying to talk and all this like we haven’t even said our names yet. It’s intense.”
Fishel echoed Friedle’s sentiments about the scene’s intensity, adding, “I don’t know how even, like, how none of us thought, ‘We know that they are a couple in real life, but does that still make [sense] as far as the show?’”
When discussing the awkward moment with episode director Jeff McKraken, Friedle jokingly asked, “Whose idea was the sexual assault?”
McKraken, for his part, quipped that Friedle was “instrumental” in the PG-13 scene before adding that Hewitt “couldn’t have been nicer” and “fit right in” with the rest of the cast.
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Will Friedle on ‘Boy Meets World’ ABC
“She knew everybody and, you know, she knew how close I was to everybody,” Friedle agreed. “And she was game. She was, you know, a great actress and would always throw herself into a project. So, it was fun.”
Awkward over-the-top kiss scene or not, Hewitt looks back fondly on her Boy Meets World experience — but is currently focused on what’s ahead. Her book, Inheriting Magic: My Journey Through Grief, Joy, Celebration and Making Every Day Magical, as well as her film The Holiday Junkie, are both out later this month.
The Holiday Junkie sees Hewitt opposite another one of her real-life love interests: husband Brian Hallisay. Hewitt plays Andie in the film, a woman trying to keep her business afloat as she grieves the loss of her mother, and Hallisay portrays Mason, a curmudgeonly carpenter who has recently faced his own kind of loss. Together, the pair figure out a way to embrace Christmas again, finding love along the way.
Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage Jennifer Love Hewitt is keeping it in the family with her upcoming Christmas movie, The Holiday Junkie. Hewitt, 45, will star, direct and coproduce the Lifetime film, which marks her return to the network after 2010’s The Client List. The movie will also star Hewitt’s real-life husband, Brian Hallisay, as well as their […]
While speaking with Us, Hewitt shared what she hopes people take away from the movie and her book — which were inspired by the death of her mother, Patricia — this holiday season.
“I really hope that [people] walk away from reading [this] book and seeing [this] movie and going, ‘Oh, that’s who she is.’ Like, I am the holiday junkie. I am like Andie. I really do love that man in real life and in the movie. And I really do believe, like, to my core, in everyday magic. I do believe it’s possible.”
The Holiday Junkie premieres on Lifetime on Saturday, December 14, at 8 p.m. ET.
Inheriting Magic: My Journey Through Grief, Joy, Celebration and Making Every Day Magical hits shelves on Tuesday, December 10.