Plenty of icons from the ‘90s reunited at ‘90s Con Tampa over the weekend, including the cast of Boy Meets World. With Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong among the cast that appeared at the convention in Florida, they documented fun moments on social media. The trio even had a run-in with ‘90s icon Mark-Paul Gosselaar while also making jokes about how much he looks like Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek.
The Saved By the Bell star recorded an episode of the Boy Meets World rewatch podcast, Pod Meets World, over the summer. While Gosselaar admitted that he does sometimes get mistakenly "recognized" for Boy Meets World instead of his own show, he said that he would deliberately send his friends memes of James Van Der Beek since he thinks that’s the closest in terms of similarity. Between the long names, starring roles on teen shows, and resemblance, Gosselaar and Van Der Beek might as well be twins.
Fishel, Friedle, and Strong met up with Gosselaar at ‘90s Con and posted a photo to Instagram where they said they were “thrilled” to meet Van Der Beek, and it was great:
It’s definitely great to see all four of them together since it’s like worlds colliding. What makes it even funnier is that people may not know what the caption means unless they listen to Pod Meets World. Whether you're in on that podcast joke or not, though, can anybody really deny the resemblance between the former Boy Meets World star and former Dawson's Creek star?
The run-in with Gosselaar is made even better by the fact that Fishel, Friedle, and Strong shared a photo with Van Der Beek the previous week while promoting the Saved By the Bell star’s episode. Given the fact that Gosselaar's episode also dropped at the beginning of the month and then ‘90s Con happened a couple weeks later, it was perfect timing.
What would really make things better is if the Dawson’s Creek star ended up as a guest on Pod Meets World as well! It would also be a dream if he and Mark-Paul Gosselaar met up at one of these conventions so fans could do a double take. It’s something that I think the world needs. At least fans can have the interaction with the Boy Meets World crew, which is better than nothing.
Despite being a Boy Meets World podcast, Pod Meets World has brought on a number of stars that weren’t on the TGIF series. Along with MPG, the podcast welcomed Full House's Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber, both separately and together, to promote their own rewatch podcast, How Rude, Tanneritos! Melissa Joan Hart was also on an episode, and it just brought back all of the ‘90s feels. He may not be in Hollywood anymore, but hopefully James Van Der Beek appears on an episode soon to continue that nostalgia.
If you want to revisit these lookalikes' iconic characters, you can find Dawson's Creek streaming with a Max subscription and the Saved by the Bell revival with a Peacock subscription.
