Lisa Kudrow exposed the “mean” and “brutal” behavior by the male writers on “Friends.”
“There was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes,” Kudrow shared in an interview with The Times of London published last Thursday.
She continued, “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 claimed that in the writers’ room, which was filled with 12-15 staff members who were mostly men, “the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies” about her co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox.
The Emmy Award winner reiterated that the dynamic between the NBC sitcom’s writers and stars “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 recalled.
Page Six has reached out to reps for Aniston, Cox and co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane.
Kudrow played Phoebe Buffay on “Friends” from 1994 to 2004, starring alongside Aniston, Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and the late Matthew Perry.
The behavior of the “Friends” writing staff previously came into question in 2004 when former writers’ assistant Amaani Lyle filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television, accusing the writers of sexual and racial harassment.
The case eventually made it to the California Supreme Court, which ruled against Lyle and said that the crude and vulgar behavior was a necessary part of the work environment, per Variety.
Elsewhere in her interview with The Times, Kudrow, who started rewatching “Friends” after Perry’s death in October 2023, called her late co-star a “genius.”
“Whatever any of us do in the future, we will never experience something like that again,” she shared.
The “Comeback” actress also declared that she’ll “never say anything bad about ‘Friends’ because it’s still incredible work.”
Kudrow added, “There are plenty of shows with big-name comedians from that time and they are not funny, but ‘Friends’ is.”
