Fishel initially had a smaller role in the series but wound up replacing the original actress chosen to play Topanga. But the then-12-year-old had a habit of speaking quickly. This ultimately proved to be a problem for series creator Michael Jacobs, and during a recent episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, Fishel claimed he threatened to fire her from the ABC series.
"Michael starts off the notes by saying, 'Danielle, I'm going to give you your notes all at one time, at the end and I'm going to give everyone else their notes now, because if I made everyone sit here through all of the notes I had for you, we would all be here for hours and no one would ever get to go home. So you're just going to wait for the end,' " she recalled Jacobs saying. "From that moment on, my eyes welled up because, you know, I'm now in front of everybody — all the producers, all the writers, all the cast and all eyes are on me for a second. And then he just quickly moved on."
Jacobs then proceeded to deliver his notes to everyone else before calling down Fishel's mother from the studio audience to join her at a table on set. "He went through every single one of my lines and what he wanted and what I wasn't doing right and how slow I needed to talk," she said.
"What I know specifically was said is, 'All I know is, if you don't come back tomorrow doing this entirely differently, you are also not going to be here,' referencing the girl I had replaced," she added.
She and her mother stayed up until the wee hours of the morning "going over every single line." After participating in rehearsal the next day, she recalled Jacobs standing up to say, "Let's give Danielle a round of applause, you did exactly what I asked of you. Thank you, thank you. Congratulations, it was wonderful."