“Boy Meets World” and “White Chicks” star Maitland Ward says young actors in the “Hollywood machine” were treated like a “product.”
The actress, who appears in a Monday, April 27, episode of Investigation Discovery’s docuseries “Hollywood Demons” dubbed “Child Stars Gone Wild,” 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, 49, told the outlet in an interview published Tuesday, 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.”
The actress, who starred as Rachel McGuire on the ABC series, was 21 to around 23 years old during her time on the show.
She continued, “I think it was such a factory kind of environment. Like you were just a product being sold, and you knew that yourself.”
Maitland Ward attends the 2025 Adult Video News Awards at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas on Jan. 25, 2025, in Las Vegas.
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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.”
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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.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maitland Ward of ‘Boy Meets World’ on being a ‘product’ in Hollywood
