We found an article from June 2014 with quotes from Michael. However some of this information is new so we wanted to post it.
Quoted from Shineon-media.com:
14. This is a show for the “every man” and “every girl.”
Over the years, you are going to fall in love with Riley the same way you fell in love with Cory. “Every show gets tested and we go through focus groups. What we were hearing is “who do you want to be?” Maya, Maya. Everyone was Maya. Everybody got nervous and we were like is Riley testing high enough?,” Jacobs revealed. “I said, don’t you understand? Every Riley in the audience wants to be Maya. It’s Ben all over again. In the beginning of “Boy Meets World,” Cory was never the highest testing character. It would be Shawn, it would be Topanga, it would be Feeny, it’d be extra #7. After year 3, it was Cory, year 4, Cory. He became the aspirational character. He showed the vast, predominant every man audience that “we are going to have a life.” Most shows on TV now, it’s hard to look like that, it’s hard to sound like that, it’s hard to have a girlfriend or boyfriend that looks like that as well. We want to do it real. I want a stumbling, gawky, unsure of herself child to grow up in front of us again. We did it once and we were successful.”
17. The show will give you major feels.
“We can’t tell you how many times we read “Don’t screw this up Disney. This was my upbringing.” We took that to heart and I thought to myself, I just read a biography of Van Gogh, and he died and didn’t know what he was,” Jacobs said on set. “We are lucky enough to have heard we did good while we’re still alive. That’s why it was worth doing. The reaction to that particular series. There’s a column I want to play in. It’s “The Wonder Years” and “Happy Days” and those were the shows I was raised on. What I loved about them was at the end of every episode, I felt something. If I’m emulating anything, it’s that I want people to come out of it feeling something.”
18. Finally, we’ll leave you with this. Don’t judge the show just off the pilot.
During our chat with Michael Jacobs, he said multiple times to not compare the pilot episode of “Girl Meets World” to the entire series of “Boy Meets World.” Give the show a chance and you’ll fall in love with Riley the same way you fell in love with Cory.
“I don’t want the new show to be compared in pilot to an entire 156 episode series. The worst nightmare I have is that we’ve gotten all of this wonderful press and I’m scared to death of “oh that wasn’t worth waiting for. What did he give us?” You can’t possibly compare an entire series of a show to a pilot but I promise you, if you look at the pilot of “Boy Meets World” and look at the “Girl Meets World” pilot and watch the episodes unfold, we’re as good or better. Divorcing myself completely from having done both shows, the reason that I believe that the original audience from “Boy” if they still around will be well rewarded by the growth of these characters because the world is different. After the pilot was completed, we immediately wanted to touch on issues. What we were reading was can you please do what “Boy” did.”
Source Shineon-media.com