Disney Is Accused of Treating Actresses “Like Meat” on Classic Show

It’s easy to watch your favorite sitcoms from the nineties and feel comforted, or to create an idealized version of those times (particularly if they fall under the Walt Disney Company purview, where “Disney magic” supposedly reigns supreme) — but apparently, things were not actually as rosy and wholesome as they seemed offscreen in the “wonderful world of Disney”!

Fans of the popular ABC sitcom Boy Meets World, which aired on ABC between 1998 and 2000, will be saddened to learn that, according to one of the show’s stars, Disney did not treat its actresses well on the show (or, allegedly, on any of its shows).

Maitland Ward, the actress who played the character Rachel McGuire on the television show, just revealed in an interview with Fox News Digital that Disney really was a “machine” that did not take its actors’ well-being into account.

According to Ward, this issue was worse for females. “Girls were treated like meat [by Disney],” the actress (who now happily works in the porn industry as an adult film performer) declared in the Fox News Digital interview.

Not only were actresses treated poorly on the show, according to Ward, but they were also given impossible standards to meet. “You had to be virginal, but you also had to be sexual,” the actress explained.

Maitland Ward made it clear in the Fox News Digital interview that “the issues mainly came from Disney, and…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.”

Ward didn’t seem to remember Boy Meets World entirely negatively, however, saying the following: “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’s mention of Disney’s mistreatment of its female actresses has also come up for more recent shows than Boy Meets World; according to one Suite Life of Zack and Cody star who still views his childhood fame as a “trauma,” the girls on Disney Channel were “heavily sexualized” and treated far worse than the boys on set.

Do you ever wonder what is happening behind the cameras on the set of Disney shows — both when you are rewatching past ABC shows like Boy Meets World or Disney Channel hits like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody?