Lisa Kudrow recently told the London Times that she had to endure “mean things” from the “Friends” writing staff, which was “mostly male,” during her 10 seasons on the NBC comedy. Kudrow, who starred as the free-spirited Phoebe Buffay, said the writers scolded the cast for forgetting their lines and spent her off time daydreaming about her female co-stars.
“There were definitely some sneaky things going on behind the scenes,” Kudrow said. “Remember we were recording in front of a live audience of 400 people. If you messed up these writers’ lines and it didn’t get the perfect reaction, they’d say, ‘Can’t this damn woman read? She’s not even trying. She messed up my lines.'”
She added that in the writers’ room, “the guys talked late into the night about their sexual fantasies about Jennifer (Aniston) and Courtney (Cox). It was intense.”
Kudrow called the writers’ treatment of the cast “brutal,” but said he wasn’t too concerned because most of their misconduct happened behind closed doors.
“Yeah, it might be cruel, but these people, and it was mostly men, were sitting until 3 a.m. writing the show, and my attitude was, ‘Just say what you like about me behind my back and I’ll be fine,'” she said.
The actions of the Friends writing team were famously exposed by Amani Lyle in the early 2000s. Lyle, who worked on the show for its sixth season in 1999, filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television over conduct in the writers’ room. In her lawsuit, she claimed that the writers of “Friends” frequently made sexual and racist comments to her and that, as a writer’s assistant, she was forced to take notes on everything said in the room. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against Mr. Lyle, finding that rough behavior was a necessary part of the working environment.
