Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay on the famous NBC sitcom Friends, recently opened up about how unpleasant it was to work with the writing team of the show, who were “mostly men.” The actress shed light on some of the dark things that were taking place behind closed doors.
Lisa Kudrow recalls working with Friends’ brutal writing team
During a recent interview with The Times of London, Friends star Lisa Kudrow said she had to endure some “mean stuff” from the show’s writing staff, who were “mostly men.” There were often questionable instances over the show’s 10-season run, some of which Kudrow revealed in the new interview.
“There was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes,” the actress said, “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 b**ch fucking read? She’s not even trying. She fucked up my line.’”
But this was not all. Kudrow revealed that she, along with her co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, knew “that back in the room the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney. It was intense.”
Kudrow called the treatment of the writing staff “brutal.” She added, “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.’”
Amaani Lyle, who was part of the sixth season of Friends, famously exposed this behavior of the writing staff back in the early 2000s. She brought a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television for conduct in the writers’ room. She alleged that the writers frequently made sexual and racist remarks. Eventually, Lyle lost the case.
Friends remains one of the most popular sitcoms in the world.