Maitland Ward , who played Rachel McGuire on ABC’s “Boy Meets World” from 1998 to 2000, said that “girls were treated like meat,” by the “Disney machine.”
“You had to be virginal, but you also had to be sexual,” Ward told Fox News Digital in an interview published Friday.
The actress, who is now an adult film performer, said the problem wasn’t her co-stars or ABC. “The issues mainly came from Disney, and that it wasn’t so much with the cast members. It was more the whole Disney machine back then, especially back in the late ’90s and early 2000s when the girls were treated like meat.”
She previously spoke out about her time on the sitcom when her memoir “Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me From Hollywood,” was published in September.
In the sixth chapter of her book, Ward said she was asked to try on lingerie for “Boy Meets World” producers, “primarily men,” in the office “more than once,” and that the experience made her “uncomfortable.”
“My confidence was low with my body,” said the actress, who is now 46. “I was young, impressionable and thought this is what you do. It would never happen today because somebody would get called out on it. And let me just say, I’m in porn, and I’ve never had to walk into a producer’s office or whatever and try on the lingerie for a shoot.”
She added, “Even though there were issues with Disney and production and my character and relationships, I do remember it as an innocent time, though, with a cast that was very much family.”
Ward continued, “It’s a family. It’s complicated. Like maybe you have issues with your father, but you work them out later or something. But the Disney stuff, I don’t know if they’ll ever work it out. That’s different.”
Unfortunately, Ward’s accusations only add to a series of claims stemming from the treatment of female stars of the ’90s and ’00s. Much of that treatment and the public’s reception of it have been reassessed in the last few years with Britney Spears gaining her freedom from her father’s conservatorship, Joss Whedon coming under fire for allegedly running an “extremely toxic” set on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Wonder Years” star Fred Savage getting fired from the series reboot over “inappropriate” behavior.
