Rider Strong reveals what triggered his on-set collapse

Rider Strong, best known for playing Shawn Hunter on Boy Meets World, revealed he once had a “breakdown” during the rehearsal for the hit show.

The 45-year-old American actor and director appeared on the Thursday, June 19 episode of Pod Meets World, where he opened up to his erstwhile co-stars Will Friedle and Danielle Fishel about his “breakdown” on Boy Meets World season 6 episode Getting Hitched in 1999.

For the unversed, in the episode, Hunter does not answer a call from his half-brother Jack, played by Matthew Lawrence, who asks for help to clean out their late father Chet’s trailer.

Chet succumbed to a heart attack in the previous episode and despite having a complicated relationship with his father, losing him was very difficult for Hunter, especially after he first thought that Chet was the one paying for his college fees.

Strong said, "Shawn's emotional story is that his dad is never there for him. But if his dad was actually paying for his college in Shawn's story — I believe that the denial is possible. But his dad was taking care of him then, in Shawn's mind."

Even though Hunter found out that Jack’s rich parents were really the ones paying for his college, which could have helped him leave the trailer park, he first chose to stay.

Friedle, who portrayed Eric Matthews on the show, quipped, “The fact that they played the scene out and Shawn didn't leave and stayed there and had the conversation, I thought was just such a better way to go about it than Shawn just leaving again.”

Hunter does leave in the end but Strong shared when he was practising that scene, “This is where I had my breakdown,” because he “was really bored by my character.”

“What's funny is, in retrospect, this is actually a well-written episode for Shawn ... he's finally expressing something. But I remember during rehearsal, I just lost it. I was like, 'I feel like I'm saying the same thing every week,’” he added.

“It's interesting because now that I look at it, I'm like, 'Actually, my character is finally expressing himself. This is good.' But I don't know. Maybe I was just tired of being on the show.”

“I was like, 'Why [do] they keep throwing drama at me?' Now looking at it, this is on the heels of an episode where they killed my father and really put a lot of pressure on us as actors — pressure on Blake and Matt and me,” Rider Strong stated.