Rachael Leigh Cook Shares Insight Into Rider Strong Romance

Rachael Leigh Cook recently offered a rare insight into her teenage romance with Rider Strong.

During a conversation with Danielle Fishel, Strong’s Boy Meets World co-star, on the Wednesday, March 18 episode of the “Teenbeat” podcast, Cook, 46, reminisced about their relationship from the 1990s.

The She’s All That actress described Strong as “romantic” and “deep” during their time together, admitting that she later realized she “didn’t understand him” as well as Fishel did.

Cook shared, “Rider has the most poetic soul,” recalling an instance when Strong visited her in Italy and they encountered a field of sunflowers en route.

Cook recounted that Strong, also 46, impulsively asked the driver to stop so they could run through the sunflowers together.

“He tells the driver, ‘Stop the car.’ And he looks at me and I’m like, ‘Oh no, what are we doing?’” Cook remembered. “We have to run into these flowers, like, really, spikey-looking flowers, like a movie.”

This experience led Cook to realize that their personalities might not be compatible enough for a lasting relationship.

“I knew in that moment, like, I’m not, I’m not the person, what he’s ultimately gonna need,” she admitted. “And I tried, we got a little way into that field, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know about this.’”

Additionally, the Josie and the Pussycat Dolls star recounted a conversation with Strong where he asked, “If you weren’t with me, you know, who would you want to be with?” Cook responded with the name of her ex-boyfriend.

Cook later shared with Fishel, 44, that when she posed the same question to Strong, he replied with “Danielle.”

Fishel has openly discussed her crush on Strong while they were co-stars on Boy Meets World, which coincided with the period when Strong was dating Cook.

Fishel first disclosed her feelings for Strong in an August 2022 episode of their podcast “Pod Meets World.”

“He was so smart, and … one of my favorite things about Rider — and it continues to this day — [is that] Rider is very effusive,” she said of what initially drew her to Strong.. “He will tell you how he feels and he’s very free with his compliments, but he doesn’t throw them out willy-nilly. When he compliments you, it is thoughtful, it has meaning, and you can tell it’s coming from a very real place.”

In an October 2023 episode of the podcast, Fishel read a passage from her teenage diary written in the ’90s, which detailed her jealousy over Cook and Strong’s relationship.

“Then we went to acting class but we had to wait for Rachael,” Fishel recounted, pointing out that the word “Rachael” was underlined in annoyance. “Then Rider and Rachael got all lovey-dovey, and it made me want to puke. Then they kissed, and it looked so cute. She’s actually really sweet and cool, but I really like Rider. I don’t think she’s right for him. Then again, maybe I’m not either.”