Friends icon Lisa Kudrow is sharing the darker side of starring on the hit sitcom.
In a recent interview with The Times of London, Kudrow, 62, said that the classic 1990s comedy “captured a kind of innocence that maybe a younger generation has never got to experience,” but it wasn’t all laughter behind the scenes.
“Oh no, there was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes,” said Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay in all 10 seasons of Friends, starring alongside Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, David Scwhimmer, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry.
The Emmy winner recalled that the show’s writers’ room was largely dominated by men.
“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.
She continued, “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 3 a.m. 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 added.
Earlier this month, Kudrow looked back at her time on Friends, revealing that she was often referred to as the “sixth Friend,” claiming her costars’ Hollywood careers took off before hers did.
“Nobody cared about me,” she said of the show’s early success in an interview with the U.K.’s Independent. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.’”
“There was no vision for me and no expectations about the kind of career I could have,” she said. “There was just, like, ‘Boy, is she lucky she got on that show.’”
Despite being the first Friends cast member to win an Emmy in 1998, Kudrow said she largely booked independent movies until she landed a hit with Analyze This, the 1999 comedy starring Robert De Niro.
“That’s when the agents and business people started circling, wanting to put me in romantic comedies and things,” she said. “I knew that wasn’t gonna work. I’m just not adorable!”
Kudrow also starred in the cult classic movie Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, which was released in 1997. Her other credits since Friends have included HBO’s The Comeback, which is currently airing its third and final season.
