Lisa Kudrow is known for playing Phoebe Buffay on Friends, the hit sitcom that ran from 1994 until 2004. Although the cast still hangs out to this day, in a recent interview with The Times, Kudrow revealed that there was “mean stuff going on behind the scenes.”
The actress claimed that the women who starred on the show—herself, Jennifer Aniston, and Courteney Cox—were not always treated well by the writers of the series, who were predominantly men.
“We were recording in front of a live audience of 400,” she said. “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*tch f***ing read? She’s not even trying. She f***ed up my line.’”
She also revealed that the writers would sexualize the female members of the cast. “We know that back in the room, the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney,” she said. “It was intense.”
She continued, “These guys – and it was mostly men in there – were sitting up until 3am trying to write the show, so my attitude was, ‘Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn’t matter.’”
Years ago, there was a lawsuit filed by Amaani Lyle, a writer’s assistant on Friends who claimed she faced racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the writer’s room.
As reported by Bustle, “In the lawsuit, Lyle said she remembered writers talking about ‘what they would like to do sexually to different female cast members on the show’ and made ‘demeaning comments’ about another actress in the cast, an identical account to Kudrow’s memory.” However, the lawsuit was thrown out of court in 2006, with a judge ruling that the writers had not violated any laws.
