‘Friends’ writer claims cast were “aggressive” and “dire” to work with

Friends scriptwriter Patty Lin has claimed that the cast of the hit sitcom were “aggressive” and “dire” to work with.

In her new memoir End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood, Lin opened up about her negative experience working on the show.

The writer, who also worked on Freaks And Geeks, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad, got the call to work on the seventh season of Friends which aired in 2000/2001.

“My disillusionment [with the business] had begun at my very first writing job but was momentarily staved off by a positive experience at Freaks and Geeks,” Lin wrote in book, (via TIME).

She added that while she was hugely excited to meet the cast of Friends, the novelty of dealing with big stars up close “wore off fast”.

“The actors seemed unhappy to be chained to a tired old show when they could be branching out, and I felt like they were constantly wondering how every given script would specifically serve them,” she explained.

Lin claimed that when actors didn’t like a joke, they would deliberately sabotage it, forcing a rewrite. She added that “dozens of good jokes would get thrown out” due to cast members fluffing their lines or talking “through a mouthful of bacon”.

The writer went on to explain how the cast and writers would sit on the set of Monica and Chandler’s apartment to discuss the script, and that the actors rarely had any positive notes.

“This was the actors’ first opportunity to voice their opinions, which they did vociferously. They rarely had anything positive to say, and when they brought up problems, they didn’t suggest feasible solutions,” Lin wrote.

“Seeing themselves as guardians of their characters, they often argued that they would never do or say such-and-such. That was occasionally helpful, but overall, these sessions had a dire, aggressive quality that lacked all the levity you’d expect from the making of a sitcom.”

She added: “I didn’t learn that much, except that I never wanted to work on a sitcom again. But the choice had been clear at the time. And, for better or worse, Friends would remain my most recognisable credit.”

Earlier this week, Rachel Green star Jennifer Aniston hit out against the idea of cancel culture, saying she doesn’t “put everybody in the Harvey Weinstein basket”.