Key Points
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Will Friedle is looking back on meeting Rich Cronin before the LFO frontman started dating Friedle’s ex, Jennifer Love Hewitt.
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The meeting lasted “one night and never saw them again,” he recalled. “He was actually a very nice guy.”
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“He was talking about how it was cool to hang out with me and how he really liked her, too. And then they were dating a couple weeks later,” Friedle added. “I was like, ‘That bastard is dating my girlfriend.'”
Will Friedle is looking back on a charged encounter with LFO frontman Rich Cronin.
The Boy Meets Worldstar and Cronin briefly hung out at some point in the late 1990s, Friedle recalled on the Sept. 18 episode of Pod Meets Twirl’d. But the encounter doesn’t stand out for him now because of his LFO fandom or because of Cronin’s untimely death in 2010 at the age of 35.
They would actually come to share a major link in the weeks after the meeting
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“I had one trip where I was hanging out with LFO,” Friedle shared, “and then I ended up at dinner with that guy, Lou Pearlman, who put together NSYNC. So we had dinner with LFO and Lou Pearlman… That one night and never saw them again. And I remember the main dude from LFO, rest in peace, I think his name was Rich. He was actually a very nice guy.”
Friedle can think back fondly on his LFO encounter now, but he wasn’t so sunny at the time. “He was telling me, because I think I was dating Love at the time, or I’d just broken up with her, something like that. He was talking about how it was cool to hang out with me and how he really liked her, too. And then they were dating a couple weeks later.”
Friedle and Hewitt dated for about a year, between 1996 and 1997, during which time they co-starred in the teen comedy Trojan War. Hewitt and Cronin then met in 1999, during which time Cronin co-wrote the song “Girl on TV” about the actress. Hewitt went on to star in the music video for the song. They broke up in 2000.
“I was like, ‘That bastard is dating my girlfriend.’ But she wasn’t my girlfriend at the time,” Friedle laughed. “I remember we hung out the entire night. He was a super nice guy, a super nice guy.”
Looking back on his relationship with Love in 2001, Cronin told the San Francisco Chronicle, “It went from ‘I love you’ every day to, literally, within a week, ‘I hate you, don’t ever call me again.'” Cronin wondered to himself, “‘What the hell happened?’ We were really close.”
You can listen to the full episode of Pod Meets Twirl’dabove.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
