If you’re ever trying to clear the air about anything, and you happen to be a former child star and/or celebrity, you can take a quick stop to “Pod Meets World,” the Boy Meets World podcast that frequently invited 90s icons to debunk headlines about themselves. They also talk about Boy Meets World, if that isn’t clear.
Actor Andrew Keegan recently appeared on the podcast, which is hosted by Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle, where he was able to finally put some rumors to bed. The actor made headlines in 2014 when Vice claimed Keegan was starting his “own religion,” sparking backlash. It happens! He explained that in his early 20s, he moved to Venice Beach and “got immersed in the culture and the community” with a group of “hippie types,” when things took a turn. Much like the episode of Boys Meets World where Shawn accidentally joins a cult.
He continued, “There was this interesting group of hippie types, if you will, in Venice. I’m sure if you went on the west side, there’s definitely a lot of spirituality,” he explained. “I was connected with some folks and we had this opportunity. This old Hare Krishna Temple, it was sitting there empty and we were like, ‘Why don’t we get some people together and let’s open this place up?’” The “opportunity” was to fix up a little temple and “do some positive things for the community.” But we’re not talking basement bingo nights, here.
Keegan admitted he put in a lot of money to keep the elaborate events running. “Looking back, it was insane. I was putting down 10s of thousands of dollars, but we opened it up and spent three years and really did build an amazing friend group,” Keegan said. “We went through something really significant from 2014 to 2017.”
On “Pod Meets World” Keegan claimed that the group, which was called Full Circle, was “the opposite of what you would imagine” after reading the headlines. “There was no doctrine. We were just getting people together. ‘The Co-Creator’s Handbook’ was the handbook we used… For all intents and purposes, it was a really cool community center for a bunch of people in Venice for a few years.” Still, the Vice article claimed Keegan was considered “the leader” of the group, which described their movement as “advanced spiritualism” or “the highest spiritualism founded on universal knowledge.” The article also detailed several religious ceremonies that involved various crystals.
Keegan now admits that it looked a little suspicious. “I probably should have had a little bit more media training at the time,” Keegan said on the podcast. “They just really created a very interesting, colorful story and put it together… we really just got together and did a Sunday thing. We did almost 1,000 events in three years and it was actually really hard. It was really beneficial to a lot of people, I still hear about it now, where people are like, ‘That was such a great time.’”
It’s still unclear what they really did, but Keegan sure is proud of it, even if he lost a couple grand.