Danielle Fishel has revealed the brutal extent of her leg injury sustained during her stint on Dancing With the Stars.
Posting via TikTok on Friday, September 26, the Boy Meets World actress, 44, shared a confronting look at her bruised and battered leg. The video showed a bruise that was large and purple, extending from her mid-thigh all the way down to below her knee.
“How I talk to my knees after four weeks of rehearsals and two live shows,” Fishel wrote on the post.
She added the Destiny’s Child song, “Cater 2 U” to the post and lip-synced along. The song’s lyrics included, “Baby, I see you working hard / Wanna let you know I’m proud, let you know that I admire what you do / Don’t know if I need to reassure you / My life would be purposeless without you.”
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Making light of her injury, Fishel wrote in the post’s caption, “I promise my leg feels better than it looks 😂 @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS #dwts.”
The TikTok post comes after Fishel revealed in rehearsal footage aired on Tuesday, September 23 that she had suffered a “hamstring tear.”
Following the hamstring tear, she went for a deep tissue massage, which she explained “broke every blood vessel in the back of [her] leg.”
The reality TV contestant admitted, “I am pushing through the pain.”
@daniellefishel8 I promise my leg feels better than it looks 😂 @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS #dwts
Speaking to Us Weekly after the episode, Fishel shared her “biggest challenge” as she worked through the grueling injury.
“You know what, it’s been the care I’ve had to put into taking care of myself morning, afternoon and evening,” she explained. “Like, when you are nursing an injury, you have to alternate ice and heat, and I have to elevate, and I’ve had to compress, and I’ve had to have PT two to three times a week.”
Already dealing with a jam-packed schedule, Fishel was forced to find time to get on top of her injury and take care of herself.
“I had to meet with a surgeon to see if I needed surgery on top of an already kind of grueling rehearsal schedule,” she told Us. “To find time to take care of myself has been, probably, the biggest challenge.”
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Fishel is competing on season 34 of the competition, with her dance partner Pasha Pashkov by her side every step of the way.
The pro told Us Weekly that he took Fishel’s leg injury into account when devising the dance steps she’d need to master.
“Going into this week, we already knew that the leg is struggling a little bit. So to begin with, we already did the choreo[graphy] in such a way that it doesn’t really affect the right leg at all,” Pashkov, 39, said. “But even throughout the week, we were just thinking of simplifying some things.”
Fishel is best known for playing Topanga Lawrence on Boy Meets World, which ran from 1993 to 2000. She now cohosts podcast “Pod Meets World” with her former costars from the show, Rider Strong and Will Friedle.
