Lisa Kudrow: “Friends” Writers Spent Hours Talking About Sexual Fantasies About Female Actors
According to the CinemaDrame news agency, Lisa Kudrow, the actress from the popular series Friends, revealed in a recent interview that during her ten-season run on the show, she experienced inappropriate behavior from the writing team—mostly composed of men—describing the backstage environment as not always friendly.
Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay, said that troubling and insulting incidents took place behind the scenes. She explained that the show was filmed in front of around 400 live audience members, and if an actor delivered a line incorrectly or failed to meet the writers’ expectations, some of them would speak about the actor in very harsh and offensive terms, accusing them of not even putting in the effort to properly read the script.
She also stated that in the writers’ room, men would stay up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox. According to Kudrow, the atmosphere there was extremely intense and excessive.
The actress described the writers’ behavior toward the cast as “cruel,” but said she did not pay much attention to their comments because most of it happened behind closed doors. She explained that the writers worked until around 3 a.m. on the scripts, which made her prefer to ignore what was said about her behind her back, as it was never said to her directly.
The controversial behavior of the Friends writing team had previously made headlines in the early 2000s. Amani Lyle, who worked in 1999 during the sixth season as a writing assistant on the show, filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television. In her complaint, she alleged that the show’s writers regularly made sexual and racist remarks, and that as an assistant she was required to document everything said in the writers’ room.
The case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court, but the ruling was not in Lyle’s favor, as the judges determined that the offensive and harsh atmosphere of the writers’ room was part of the working environment of the production.
