'Boy Meets World' star Maitland Ward says Hollywood can be 'very dark' – USA Today

“Boy Meets World” actress Maitland Ward is opening up about the harsh realities of Hollywood.
The actress, 49, is among the participants reflecting on their experiences for Investigation Discovery’s docuseries “Hollywood Demons” (Mondays, 9 ET/PT). In a clip of the April 27 episode dubbed “Child Stars Gone Wild,” given to USA TODAY exclusively, Ward recalls a time when she was asked to wear lingerie for ABC’s sitcom that ran for seven seasons, from 1993–2000. Ward, who starred as Rachel McGuire, was 21 to around 23 years old during her time on the show.
“I went into wardrobe and they had a lot of lingerie set up,” Ward says in the preview. Some of them options “were really skimpy,” Ward says. Photographs were taken so producers could see the different looks, Ward says. The actress says she then received word that she’d need to model the outfits in person.
“Hollywood can be a very dark and scary place,” Ward says, adding that she did “the little show” in front of an audience of predominately men.
“I did it three times where I went to the offices and I tried everything on,” she says. “It felt more like young guys looking at nudie magazines … when you’re a teenager and stuff. But these were not teenagers. These were grown men.”
Ward recently told Fox News Digital that her experience as a young star was “such a different animal” than what today’s stars likely go through.
“Back then, I think they looked at these young actors as property coming in,” Ward told the outlet in an interview published Sunday, April 26. “And I really believe the studios, they wanted to mold and form these young actors into what they wanted them to be, what they needed them to be for the company and for the audience, to what they felt would identify with.”
Ward continued, “I think it was such a factory kind of environment. Like you were just a product being sold, and you knew that yourself.”
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She told Fox that while she didn’t think anything was necessarily wrong at the time, she did feel “ill at ease in my own body.” But she told herself, “I have to be professional. I have to be part of that Hollywood machine.”
The actress, who made a turn to OnlyFans in 2019, also opened up on the docuseries about her time on “Boy Meets World.” Specifically, she compared how much she was paid on the series, “$20,000 or $25,000 an episode,” versus “six figures a month” making adult content. And on TV, the “Bold and the Beautiful” star would be worried that a show “could fire” her whenever they so chose. “You don’t have all the guarantees out there,” she added.
“Hollywood Demons,” ID’s series exploring the “dark realities behind fame,” premiered its second season on April 20.

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