They go, “Oh, he’s actually legitimized in some ways. So I think that getting crew, for instance-people will meet with me. I think it’s easier to get my foot in the door, but it’s harder to be taken seriously once I’m there. Q: Does being a former child sitcom star make it easier or harder to break into filmmaking?Ī: That’s a really good question. Though, they did a great episode of Freaks and Geeks with D&D, where James Franco shows up and he’s the cool guy playing D&D and he ends up being great at it. Now everyone is like, “Oh, did you see that?” We shot ours a year ago. But now everybody is sort of saying that. Shiloh saw it and he said it was pretty different. Q: Does the Dungeons & Dragons episode of Community help or hurt what you’re trying to do?Ī: No, no. All of that self-hating geek insecurity was interesting to us. We suck, so Shiloh and I decided to sort of run with that as a short film and, obviously, add some magic. And we realized that we were the assholes in the situation because he was having a lot more fun, and we weren’t because we were so insecure about being perceived as geeky. We ran into a friend that we used to play D&D with, and we’re like, “We can’t tell anybody about this, but we should try it again.” None of us could remember the rules, so we invited a guy to come and he was pretty geeky.

Q: Is Rider Strong really your real name?Ī: Oh yeah. We discussed a wide range of topics, including the origins of his quite unique name, the challenges of being a former child star breaking into filmmaking, Burt Reynolds’s temper on the set of Evening Shade, and why Boy Meets World is so synonymous with college dorms and the illegal use of marijuana. With Strong in New York City for the competition, we thought it would only be appropriate to subject him to his own set of 25 Questions to answer. It turns out, these days, Rider Strong (along with his brother, Shiloh) has just directed a short film titled The Dungeon Master-about a group of young adults who decide to relive their youth by playing a round of Dungeons & Dragons with what ends up being a way too invested dungeon master-which screened last month at the Tribeca Film Festival ( and can be viewed online here). Funny thing about the Internet: within four days, former Boy Meets World star Rider Strong had contacted me to, um, discuss the finer points of my sarcasm. Last November, in a 25 Questions review for the animated film Tangled, I made a somewhat flippant name comparison between the film’s lead character, Flynn Rider, and the actor who played Shawn Hunter on Boy Meets World, Rider Strong.

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