Here’s Everything There Is To Know About “Boy Meets World” Stars Will Friedle And Rider Strong’s Relationship With Brian Peck, And Why They Feel “Shame And Guilt” For Supporting Him

According to court documents, Peck was coaching the young actor at his home when the offenses took place, and was arrested after the boy’s parents reported him to the police. 

Peck, who was 43 years old at the time, was originally charged with 11 counts, including lewd act upon a child, sodomy of a person under 16, attempted sodomy of a person under 16, sexual penetration by a foreign object, four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16, oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance, sending harmful matter, and using a minor for sex acts. 

He ended up pleading “no contest” to just two counts, lewd act against a child, and oral copulation. The court found him guilty of both, and the remaining counts were dismissed. 

Amid the allegations, Peck called on a host of his famous friends to support him in court, with two of those people being former Boy Meets World stars Rider Strong and Will Friedle.

Rider, who shot to fame as a child star on Boy Meets World, was around 16 years old when he first met Peck, who was 37. Will was 19 years old.

Despite the large age gap — and Rider being a minor at the time of their first meeting — Peck forged a close friendship with both young stars, which continued long after Boy Meets World wrapped in 2000.

Prior to Peck’s conviction, he would attend parties and social events with Rider, and even secured Will a movie role when he struggled to audition for work due to his debilitating anxiety. 

In fact, Peck has been described as becoming “part of their most trusted inner circle."

On Monday’s episode of their podcast, Pod Meets World, Rider, Will, and their cohost, Danielle Fishel, were joined by family therapist Kati Morton for an important conversation on “sexual predators, manipulation, and grooming.”

Danielle kicked off the episode by telling listeners that none of them had seen signs of Peck’s problematic behavior prior to his arrest and confirmed that they were not victimized by him themselves. She added: “We were constantly told by this person, who was our friend, that he was the actual victim.”

The trio then reflected on the seamless way that Peck managed to infiltrate Rider and Will’s personal lives when he first came to the Boy Meets World set, with it being pointed out that it was normal for them, as child actors, to be friends with older people at work. 

And while their parents and some other members of the crew would often question the relationships between the young cast and the adults on set, Danielle theorized that Peck’s growing closeness to them may have been overlooked because he was openly gay.

“The other adults on set who maybe could have or should have said: ‘Why are you guys going to lunch with this man? Why is this guy going to Rider’s house for a party?,’ there was probably a part of them that didn’t say it because they were afraid that it was going to be taken as homophobia,” she said. “Instead of, gay or not, this is a boundary about adults and kids.”

In fact, Rider said that Peck became known as the “Forrest Gump of Hollywood” because he appeared to know everybody, and had been behind the scenes of many famous movies. He and Will then shared their discomfort that Peck was likely dropping their names to other people.

“If he was telling us all these stories with all these famous names, that means chances are he was telling other people stories with our names, and that, to me, is another thing I think back on,” Will said. “He wasn’t just telling us stories, he was using them. So this idea that I was somehow collected without knowing it…”

Will then admitted: “I look back and I go, I can’t have been this naive. This man came onto our set, befriended us instantly, super nice guy."

“I was working a lot after Boy Meets World, and this guy had so integrated himself into my life I took him to three shows after Boy Meets World,” the star went on. “The person he presented was this great, funny guy who was really good at his job and you wanted to hang out with.”

Rider, on the other hand, regularly saw Peck for social events. And both stars were manipulated into believing that Peck was innocent when he was arrested in 2003. 

Rider and Will clarified that they “had no idea” about all of the counts that Peck was initially charged with, and were only aware of the two that he pleaded no contest to. 

Rider said: “He only admitted to one thing but he was charged originally with a bunch of things. I never heard about the other things because, back then, you couldn’t Google to find out what people were being charged with.”

Rider speculated that Peck had actually made a “plea deal” by admitting to some but not all of the charges, saying: “It looks like he was being charged with a series of crimes, which we did not know, and that’s really disturbing.”

Reflecting on the moment that Peck called on him for support, Will said: "He called me to his house, which I’d been to maybe twice so that alone was weird, and he sat me down. He said to me: ‘Hey, this is what’s happening, but this is what happened.’ He was crying the whole time. We’d just done this film together and he’d got me this role.”

Will summarized: “Yes, he committed this act, but he committed this act after being manipulated himself, after being taken advantage of. You name it, by the end, he was the saint.”

“I saw him every day, hung out with him every day, talked to him every day, and so to look back at that, and him telling me what happened and instantly spinning it to where it wasn’t his fault… My initial instinct was, like, well yeah, of course it can’t be you, it can’t possibly be you,” Will said.

“My initial instinct was: Well, he’s my friend, it can’t be, it has to be the other person’s fault. The story makes complete sense — the way that he was saying it,” Will went on, before poignantly adding: “I look back on it now and it makes me want to cry that I was ever that naive.”

And Rider was told a similar story, recalling: “He didn’t say that nothing had happened. By the time we heard about the case and knew anything about it, it was always in the context of: ‘I did this thing, I am guilty, I am going to take whatever punishment the government determines, but I’m the victim of jailbait.’”

“He then asked us to support him and go to court with him, which a lot of us did,” Will explained. “We’re then sitting in that courtroom, on the wrong side of everything, of course having no idea. It was filled with child actors, to the point that the victim’s mother turned around and said: ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you, and it doesn’t change what you did to my kid.’”

“I just sat there wanting to die,” Will admitted. “I was like: ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ It was horrifying all the way around.”

“There were a lot of us there who were very recognizable,” Will elaborated. “[Peck] had Rider and I write letters of support to the judge, and these were things that we did. And, again, we did them because we were lied to. We weren’t told the whole story. But that doesn’t change the fact that we did it.”

Referencing the court case, Will added: “I was 24, 25 when it happened. The idea that I didn’t know, couldn’t spot it, that was my own failure, in my mind. I don’t even know how to put half of what I’m feeling into words… In my head, there’s no excuses — how did you not see this?!”

“There’s an actual victim here, and he turned us against the victim to where now we are on his team,” Will continued. “And that’s the thing where, to me, I look back at that as my ever-loving shame. Getting taken in by somebody who’s a good actor and a manipulator, I could chalk that up to being young and that’s the way it is. It’s awful, but I’m going to use that for my growth as a human being… But when there’s an actual victim involved and now I’m on the abuser’s side? That’s the thing I can’t get over, and haven’t been able to get over.”

And Rider recalled feeling unsettled when he bumped into Peck — who has been working steadily in the acting world since his release from prison — at a party seven years ago.

“It was one of the most intense experiences of my life,” Rider recalled. “He immediately started talking to me as old friends, and it felt like an out of body experience where I’m having a conversation with him and I was finally able to hear the name dropping.”

“What he was letting me know was he was with famous people who validate him and put him in a category of Hollywood royalty. And he did that constantly when we were on the set of Boy Meets World, and I never saw it because it was so effortless,” he continued. “I had to leave, I was so freaked the fuck out. I could see this finally for what was happening, and it was awful.”

Therapist Kati had her own interpretation of this interaction, telling Rider: “His manipulation changed and all he cared about when he saw you was walking away from that situation letting you know: These other famous, well-connected people don’t care about my crime, you shouldn’t either.”

“This isn’t actually representative of Hollywood as a whole,” Kati said of grooming behavior. “This doesn’t happen in any kind of vacuum, it happens, unfortunately, everywhere, to a lot of different children.”

And Rider and Will have been widely praised for the way that they opened up on this week’s podcast.

“I have to admire the way they phrased their feelings, and how raw they let the conversation get,” another agreed. “Not many people (especially men, i think) are willing to go that route. And, most importantly, they're being honest - about their roles in it, how they felt, their fears, their confusion.”

“Beyond just cultural reasons for men not sharing, there are also practical reasons not to,” somebody else wrote. “They fucked up and supported the bad guy. Coming clean about that nowadays is a gamble because all it takes is people not believing you've changed and that can be game over. As much as it's obviously the right thing to do, they have nothing to personally gain from bringing all this up and making the direct connection from themselves to a sex offender. But they did it anyways, big props to those guys.”

“When some people try and pretend like ‘there’s nothing I can say so I won’t say anything’, this is an incredibly wells spoken [sic] example of why that’s wrong,” one more concluded.

Brian Peck has not publicly responded to Rider and Will's comments.