Even after almost two decades since its finale, Friends remains one of the most talked about and fan-favorite shows of all time. Launching the careers of the then-up-and-coming stars, many of the main cast have looked back on their time on the show and shared the good, the bad, and the ugly, with most of them having an abundance of positive memories. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Friend’s writer, Patty Lin, who shared her hardships with the show in her book End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood (via Time).
Patty Lin, a writer for Friends, reveals that by Season 7, the cast was looking for new projects and would allegedly sabotage jokes if they didn’t like the punchlines.
Starting her time with the series in 2000, Lin hopped on the Friends train with excitement to get going on one of the most revered productions in television history. Unfortunately, her experience would turn her off from her love of writing. Looking forward to working with the A-list talent attached to the series, which included the likes of Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry, Lin found the entire cast to be “unhappy” with their lot in life.
“Dozens of good jokes would get thrown out just because one of them had mumbled the line through a mouthful of bacon.”
Patty Lin on the cast of Friends
By this point, the show was in its seventh season, with Lin revealing that the cast was “unhappy to be chained to a tired old show when they could be branching out.” She suspected that each member of Friends was already looking toward the next project to ensure that their appearances in every episode would “specifically serve them.” And, if they didn’t like what the writers had penned for their next punchline, they’d “deliberately tank it” knowing full well that it would be back to the drawing board for the writing team.
As Lin tells it, “Dozens of good jokes would get thrown out just because one of them had mumbled the line through a mouthful of bacon.” Not receiving any help from those at the top, the Friends writer revealed that the show’s co-creators, Marta Fran Kauffman and David Crane, never stood up for the folks behind the script, letting the stars get away with their allegedly bad behavior.
Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry on Friends
Explaining how things were run on the set of Friends, Lin says that the first step following a rewrite was to run things through with the full cast on the set. Once blocking and all of the intricate details were worked out, they’d head over to the apartment known as Monica and Chandler’s and talk about what worked and what needed editing. And, according to Lin, the cast never held back with their notes.
Whether they tanked the jokes or not, the careers of the cast of Friends, specifically those of Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, have carried on long after the show took its final bow.
“This was the actors’ first opportunity to voice their opinions,” she explained, adding, “which they did vociferously.” According to Lin, negativity reigned supreme on the set of Friends, with the actors only bringing up problems with no solutions thrown into the mix. At seven seasons in, she says that the stars saw themselves as the experts on their characters, not allowing for any wiggle room.
This knowledge and dedication to their roles was “occasionally helpful,” Lin said, but most times, she remembers the actors having “a dire, aggressive quality” in ensuring that their voices were heard. At the end of the day, Lin’s experience on Friends was exactly the opposite of what she had expected from the world of sitcoms.
Whether they tanked the jokes or not, the careers of the cast of Friends, specifically those of Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, have carried on long after the show took its final bow. Along with her credits in Friends, Patty Lin also wrote for productions including Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad.
