It sounds impossible, but the math checks out: Boy Meets World premiered on Sept. 24, 1993, which means Danielle Fishel has been on TV for 31 years and counting. The show ran seven seasons and somehow managed to take Cory, Topanga, and Shawn from sixth grade to college.
Fishel was barely into her teens when she became Topanga Lawrence, and by the late ’90s she was already a staple in the TV world, not even 20 yet. That kind of spotlight messes with your head, and she didn’t sugarcoat it on a 2025 episode of Pod Meets World: “As a kid, I always wanted to be older. I always wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be seen as an adult.” Then she went harder: “I should not have been outwardly talked about at 14, 15, 16 years old. And I was, even directly to me.”
After Boy Meets World wrapped in 2000, she didn’t cling to one lane. She hosted The Dish, did work for MSN TV, and popped up as a correspondent on The Tyra Banks Show. She also kept building a life outside the celebrity life. “I think that people would probably be surprised to know that I’m really a very huge homebody,” she said in 2007. “I maybe have five friends, literally.”
Her 30s brought big chapters: she turned 30 in 2011, got engaged in 2012, married Tim Belusko in 2013 in Los Angeles, graduated from California State University, Fullerton, then married Jensen Karp in 2018 and welcomed two sons, Adler Lawrence and Keaton Joseph.
Now she’s 44, and she’s still writing new pages. Diagnosed in 2024 with high grade ductal carcinoma in situ, she pushed through surgeries, finished 20 rounds of radiation by January, and showed up smiling anyway. “I’m great,” she told People on Dec. 5. “Everything’s good.”
And the line that lands hardest: “If this has shown me anything, it has shown me that I am not experiencing enough joy in my life.”
No matter where she goes or what she does in life, Danielle Fishel will always be the beautiful Topanga Lawrence.
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