Rider Strong’s podcast ‘The Red Weather’ blurs the line between truth and fiction

Rider Strong grew up on television, both literally and figuratively. He spent nearly a decade as one of the stars of the ABC sitcom franchise “Boy Meets World,” spending his teenage years as Shaun Hunter, the moody best friend of Ben Savage’s Corey Matthews — and then the next 25 years in reruns and later memes, which can make it seem as if Strong is perpetually 16.

But of course, Strong has aged along with the rest of us, and now, at 46, after spending the last several years co-hosting the wildly popular “Pod Meets World” re-watch podcast with his former co-stars Will Friedle and Danielle Fishel, he’s ventured out on his own with a new podcast.

“The Red Weather” is a genre-bending examination of Strong’s own bohemian childhood in the woods of Northern California, interwoven with a powerful fictional story of a missing girl and, possibly, an indictment of the very culture of true crime itself. It’s unlike anything Strong has done in the past, while also challenging the popular perceptions of who he was, and who he might yet become.

Both a bold and ambitious foray into crime fiction, “The Red Weather” also reckons with Strong’s early years and the people who influenced them. “I wanted to understand certain things from my past by interviewing my family and friends,” he said during a recent interview. “But people are often coy or embarrassed about real events, so you never really get the full story. The ambiguity itself became creatively useful.”

The following interview is edited for length and clarity.

Q: Ok, so this is a tricky one — so how do you or we talk about the project while keeping some mystique? Not letting people fully know what’s real and what isn’t?

Well, this is where I’m gonna mess up. There’s a lot that is real and very honest — my childhood, my friends, ex-girlfriends. There’s a lot of real material there. But of course, the central mystery isn’t literally real, although there are real interviews included. I also don’t know if my approach will change once all the episodes are released, because by the end, it becomes pretty clear it’s not a real mystery. So there’s probably not much value in being coy anymore. I was quieter about that before it came out.

At the same time, I think people enjoy the guessing game: that sounds real, that’s his real brother, that’s his real mom. What parts of these characters are real? That’s a valid question I do want to leave open. The sisters, for example, aren’t real individuals, but they’re combinations of real people. And really, every character you write should be that way. When I interviewed my friends, I was clearly asking about specific people and then applying those answers to fictional characters. It’s autofiction in podcast form, which hasn’t really been done like this before.

Q: So I should let folks know that you and I both got our MFAs in fiction at Bennington College at the same time. Were you writing short stories there?

Yeah, I should have been writing a novel, but I wrote interconnected short stories instead. They revolved around similar themes: Northern California, the ’90s, childhood, women I grew up with, cult and commune culture. A lot of that material eventually fed into this project, just in a different form.

Q: I always tell my own MFA students that sticking too close to the literal truth can be a barrier. Was there a moment where you felt you could let go of that?

Yeah. I think the toughest lesson for writers is realizing that just because you care about something doesn’t mean anyone else will. I learned that too late. I wrote bad poems and stories where nothing really happened — just reflections on girls I grew up with, friendships, relationships — stuff nobody else really cares about.

Since Bennington, I’ve mostly been screenwriting, and screenwriting doesn’t allow for that kind of indulgence. It’s all about suspense and what keeps people interested. Once I applied that mindset to this material, it became really fun. I still wanted to include the sentimental parts, because I am a sentimental person, but also mock that sentimentality — be nostalgic and self-aware at the same time.

There’s also this weird thing where I know people will click on something I do because of nostalgia. I’m part of their nostalgia. So this felt like a way to turn that lens not just on myself but also on the audience. What do people expect me to talk about? Probably the ’90s. So this was a way to hook listeners that a straightforward mystery novel might not.

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Q: Did the process feel more like prose fiction or screenwriting?

Much closer to screenwriting. It was always dialogue-driven, with interviews woven in. I had placeholders in my outline like, “Ask so-and-so about this.” I needed flexibility in the interviews, but the structure itself was very screenplay-like.

Part of the motivation was figuring out how to make something cinematic without having to raise millions of dollars to make a movie. Eventually, I realized I’d basically written an entire crime miniseries on my own — plotting everything, structuring everything.

Q: Was it hard translating visual storytelling into an audio medium?

It meant finding audio equivalents for visual storytelling. In screenwriting, you’re always trying to externalize internal thoughts and create images that tell the story. Here, I had to figure out how to do that with sound — mix tapes, transcripts, narration, different layers of audio. It was actually a fun challenge. I listen to tons of podcasts and audiobooks, so imagining scenes through sound came pretty naturally — maybe even easier than imagining everything visually.

One of my favorite podcasts is Casefile, which is just an Australian narrator reading case files in a stripped-down way. I like getting just the facts and then imagining the scenes myself. Listening to that over the years really built the muscle I needed for this.

Q: One of our mutual friends has told me on multiple occasions that you’re, shall we say, a little obsessed with “Stand by Me.” How did that influence the project?

It’s basically the touchstone text of my life. I saw it when I was 7, and it melted my mind — I wanted to be an actor because those kids were so good. Later, River Phoenix’s death really affected me, especially since it happened right as I was becoming famous myself. It made me think about what an acting career really means.

In some ways, I’m channeling the adult narrator voice from “Stand by Me,” but I wanted to complicate that nostalgic structure. That film has a pretty straightforward relationship between narration and memory. I wanted something more layered — more self-aware and critical of the past.

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Q: In ‘The Red Weather,’ as well as elsewhere, you seem nostalgic but also critical of the past.

There’s often this romanticized view of earlier eras that ignores their darker sides. I wanted to be more critical of the ’90s, even though it’s funny, because I grew up in a small town that didn’t really reflect the mainstream pop-culture version of the decade.

Q: What childhood memories most influenced the tone you were going for?

I remember going to parties at friends’ houses where the adults were having these wild gatherings — naked adults, drugs, this unsettling vibe. I’d just want to go home because it scared me. That fear is actually inspiring, creatively. It drives a lot of what I want to write.

There’s this idealized view of ’60s and ’70s counterculture as this beautiful, idealistic moment, but to me it always felt unstable and scary, and that tension became important to the story.

Q: Did you feel like an outsider growing up between small-town life and Hollywood?

Definitely. I was mainstream at school, but being on TV made me an outsider. The real hippie kids were cool because they didn’t care what anyone thought. I felt like the biggest poseur because I was on a TV show. Then I’d come to L.A. and feel like a freak there too — a dirty hippie kid surrounded by industry people. I always felt like I didn’t fully belong anywhere.

In retrospect, though, I’m grateful for that. It gave me perspective and became a strength.

Q: When you interviewed friends and family, how much did you shape their answers to fit the story?

Not much. I knew exactly who to ask about what. I kept them somewhat in the dark because I wanted authentic answers. I knew certain family stories would work perfectly if I just asked them to retell them — stories my dad had been telling for years. I built the narrative around those artifacts: the fort we built as kids, Halloween traditions, things like that.

With friends, especially my male friends, I’d ask about girls we knew, knowing their stories would map onto the fictional sisters in the narrative. So their real answers became pieces of a different fictional context.

Q: Are some character composites rather than direct portrayals?

Yes. Some are composites of multiple real people. Others are actors representing versions of real relationships. My family members appear as themselves, but within a fictionalized narrative. Now, when they listen, it’s surreal — they hear real memories placed inside a completely different story. It’s still a little strange, honestly, because the line between real and fictional material is intentionally blurred, which is the whole point.