Boy Meets World stars Ben Savage, Rider Strong 'didn't get along' until creating Cory and Shawn's handshake

They might have played best friends across seven seasons of the beloved ABC sitcom, but Boy Meets World stars Ben Savage and Rider Strong reportedly weren't an immediate match on set — that is, until they spent a weekend together improvising one of their characters' most adorable exchanges.

"Ben and I didn't connect for the first week of the show," Strong said around the 52-minute mark of this week's episode of the Pod Meets World podcast the actor hosts with fellow series stars Danielle Fishel (Topanga) and Will Friedle (Eric).

Strong attributed his attitude toward Savage to his being a "Northern California snob" who thought "everything about L.A. was awful," and judging Savage for his connection to Southern California at the time.

"We just didn't get along that well. We didn't connect, even though we were working together," Strong said. "For some reason, I can't remember why, we just had a school day together, where the show was shut down, instead of meeting on the set.... we went and met at Ben's house.... we finally had the greatest day ever. We just connected. We had so much fun. I remember laughing and telling stories."

He added that the day also led to them creating the famous friendship handshake Cory and Shawn repeated throughout the show's run as it charted their formative years in high school and, eventually, college.

"We decided it was our handshake. It was Rider and Ben's handshake first. It was not Cory and Shawn's — we did not have any intention for it to be in the show," Strong recalled, "but then we did that episode where the blender explodes, and we just did it during rehearsals. It was not in the script."

ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Ben Savage and Rider Strong in 'Boy Meets World'

But the moment stuck, he said, and they did it several times in subsequent episodes, up through the show's conclusion in 2000.

Listen to Strong discuss the origins of the handshake in the Pod Meet World episode above.

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