{"id":632217,"date":"2026-04-26T15:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/632217\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T15:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:02:12","slug":"friends-star-lisa-kudrow-shares-brutal-experience-on-set-there-was-mean-stuff-going-on-behind-the-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/632217\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends star Lisa Kudrow shares \u2018brutal\u2019 experience on set: \u2018There was mean stuff going on behind the scenes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Friends<\/a> star Lisa Kudrow has shared the darker side of her time on the hit sitcom, revealing that the female cast faced \u201cintense\u201d scrutiny from its mostly male writers\u2019 room. <\/p>\n

Kudrow, 62, is best known for starring as free spirit Phoebe Buffet <\/a>in all 10 seasons of the comedy, which has become one of the highest-grossing TV shows of all time since it first aired in 1994. <\/p>\n

Over 20 years on from Friends\u2019 finale, Kudrow admitted in a new interview that there was \u201cmean stuff going on behind the scenes\u201d in the writers\u2019 room, which was mostly men and made up of 12 to 15 staff members. <\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc on \u2018Friends\u2019 (NBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers\u2019 lines or it didn\u2019t get the perfect response, they could be like, \u2018Can\u2019t the bitch f***ing read? She\u2019s not even trying. She f***ed up my line,\u2019\u201d she told The Times on Thursday (23 April).<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we know that back in the room, the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney. It was intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that while it \u201ccould be brutal\u201d, the writers were up all night writing on the sitcom. \u201cThese guys \u2013 and it was mostly men in there \u2013 were sitting up until 3am trying to write the show, so my attitude was, \u2018Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn\u2019t matter.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

During the show\u2019s run, writer\u2019s assistant Amaani Lyle alleged in a lawsuit that she had experienced racial discrimination and sexual harassment<\/a> while working in the Friends writers\u2019 room. She alleged that she had heard the writers talk about \u201cwhat they would like to do sexually to different female cast members on the show\u201d and made \u201cdemeaning comments\u201d about another actress in the cast. The harassment lawsuit was thrown out of court in 2006.<\/p>\n

\"KudrowKudrow now stars in \u2018The Comeback\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n

Kudrow \u2013 who currently stars in the third season of The Comeback on HBO Max \u2013 told The Independent earlier in April that her professional life didn\u2019t change much<\/a> despite Friends becoming a runaway success by season two. <\/p>\n

\u201cNobody cared about me,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as \u2018the sixth Friend\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

After being reminded that she was the first of the cast to win an Emmy, receiving it for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 1998, she added: \u201cYeah, but there was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have. There was just, like, \u2018boy, is she lucky she got on that show.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After Friends, Kudrow went on to star in Web Therapy, sitcom Space Force and appeared in Easy A, Booksmart and Long Shot. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[295312,22438,64,63,306162,99475,447,306158,36143,306156,306161,1208,134,9054,220222,111932,295309,37473,306160,306159,1861,8212,306157,112276,234932,12626,303037,427,5429,29306],"class_list":{"0":"post-632217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-arrival","9":"tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-black-coat","13":"tag-black-color","14":"tag-celebrities","15":"tag-coat-garment","16":"tag-color-image","17":"tag-cream-colored","18":"tag-cream-colored-shirt","19":"tag-england","20":"tag-entertainment","21":"tag-hbo","22":"tag-launch-event","23":"tag-lisa-kudrow","24":"tag-london-england","25":"tag-one-person","26":"tag-open-collar","27":"tag-overcoat","28":"tag-people","29":"tag-photography","30":"tag-queen-elizabeth-hall","31":"tag-red-carpet-event","32":"tag-shirt","33":"tag-smiling","34":"tag-three-quarter-length","35":"tag-tv","36":"tag-uk","37":"tag-vertical"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}