Lisa Kudrow has talked about “mean stuff going on behind the scenes” inside the Friends writers’ room — 22 years after the show ended.
The sitcom, which at its height was one of the most popular TV shows in the world, starred Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay alongside Jennifer Aniston as Rachel and Courteney Cox as Monica — the three women who formed one half of the Friends group that also included Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, and David Schwimmer as Ross Geller.
Now, Kudrow, 62, spoke to The Times about the Friends writers’ room, which was on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, saying: “there was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes.” According to Kudrow, the writers’ room contained 12-15 mostly male staff, and, she alleged, they could be mean to the actors.
“Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f***ing read? She’s not even trying. She f***ed up my line,’ Kudrow said.
“And we know that back in the room the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney. It was intense.”
“Oh, it could be brutal, but these guys — and it was mostly men in there — were sitting up until 3am trying to write the show so my attitude was, ‘Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn’t matter,’” Kudrow continued.
As The Times mentions, Friends writers’ assistant Amaani Lyle brought a sexual harassment court case in 2004. Lyle alleged the show’s male writers discussed graphically how they would like to have sex with Aniston and Cox. “I would have to listen to comments about the sexual conduct many of the writers would like to do with Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston,” Lyle alleged at the time. Lyle’s lawsuit failed in what became known throughout Hollywood as “the Friends case,” because it was used as precedent that free speech in creative environments is protected.
Kudrow is currently promoting the return of her HBO Max sitcom The Comeback, which is inspired by the experience of being inside writers’ rooms. As for Friends itself, the cast still make $20 million a year each from repeat fees, according to The Times. But there will never be a Friends reboot, a remake, or even a sequel — according to Jennifer Aniston.
Photo by Ron Davis/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
