Good Boy Turns Gold Digger
Boy Meets World grad
Will Friedle is tired of playing good guys. Happily for him, he gets to show off his shadier side in the new black comedy,
National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (opening today). Here, the 28-year-old actor tells TV Guide Online how nice it is to be naughty for a change.
TV Guide Online: We last talked in 2001. You were promoting your short-lived NBC sitcom, Go Fish.
Will Friedle: The experience was great. The show obviously wasn't what it could've been.
TVGO: So you admit it sucked?
Friedle: I would never say the show sucked! [Laughs] It wasn't up to par with some of the shows I've done. But it wasn't anybody's fault. I don't think it really found itself. It just kind of fell short.
TVGO: Your Go Fish costar Andy Dick has certainly moved on to greener pastures...
Friedle: I actually was working with Andy last week on Less than Perfect, which is produced by the same people that did Go Fish. I date Claude, who's played by Sara Rue [in the season premiere, airing Sept. 24 on ABC]. I had also worked with Sara on [the old WB drama] Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane.
TVGO: So who do you play on Less than Perfect?
Friedle: It's just a one-time thing, but it was great. My character, Caleb, works at the television station, [and] asks Claude out. Then he breaks up with her and she wants to know why. It's an episode about truth. It's very fun because it's a different character for me. He's not the nicest guy in the world — a very passive-aggressive guy you just want to smack. It's great because I'm always the nice guy from next door, so it's good to play the guy nobody likes!
TVGO: You're still thought of as your Boy Meets World character, Eric.
Friedle: Yeah, the happy-go-lucky stupid kid. Oh, god. Toward the third season, they made Eric really dumb. It was so much fun to play. You couldn't do anything wrong because everything Eric did was absolutely right for him.
TVGO: What are you up to in Gold Diggers?
Friedle: It's about two young guys — myself and Chris Owen from American Pie — trying to get rich and famous and have the hottest women in the world without having to work a day for it.
TVGO: Sounds like nice work if you can get it.
Friedle: It does sound good, it's just they're not the smartest guys. Unlike Eric, who knew he was stupid, my Gold Diggers character, Cal, is absolutely convinced that he's Steven Hawking. He's just not even close. It's like Peggy Hill on King of the Hill, who is mispronouncing everything but is convinced that she's fluent in Spanish. That kind of character is fun to play.
TVGO: What's their scam?
Friedle: They end up realizing that a good way to make money is marry two older women and reverse the [female] gold-digger standard. So we marry two women in their 70s! What we don't know at the time is they're broke, but they've insured their husbands' lives, so if we die, they make money. So it's a farce where we try to kill them, they try to kill us and a bunch of other people die by accident along the way.
TVGO: Got a girlfriend?
Friedle: I'm very much single. It's not a horrible thing. I love being single.
TVGO: Your female fans will be thrilled.
Friedle: Yeah, I'm sure there are women out there fantasizing about me. It could happen....
