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For decades, Lisa Kudrow has been a national treasure.
While promoting The Comeback‘s return, she reflected upon Friends — which she has been rewatching.
Kudrow details “mean” and “brutal” conflicts with the writers.
Including, she says, how some of the writers were clearly fantasizing about her co-stars.
‘The guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies’
During a recently published interview with The Times of London, Kudrow spoke about how less-than-friendly Friends could be off-camera.
“There was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes,” she admitted.
“Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400,” Kudrow emphasized.
“And if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response,” she shared, “they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f–king read? She’s not even trying. She f–ked up my line.’”
There are multiple infamous aspects of Friends, including the Les Moonves of it all. But Kudrow had a lot to say about the writers in particular.
According to Kudrow, the Friends writer’s room of 12-15 was comprised mostly of men.
She quipped that “the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies” about Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, her co-stars.
“It was intense,” Kudrow characterized.
She even went so far as to describe the dynamic between writers and stars as “brutal.” At times, anyway.
“But these guys — and it was mostly men in there — were sitting up until 3 a.m. trying to write the show,” Kudrow reasoned. “So my attitude was, ‘Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn’t matter.’”
She’s actually not the first to touch upon this topic
In 2004, a former writers’ assistant filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television.
Amaani Lyle accused the writers of Friends of both sexual harassment and racial harassment.
This bitter battle made it all of the way to the California Supreme Court.
In a bizarre twist, the California Supreme Court ruled against Lyle — but not upon a basis of fact.
Rather, the court agreed that the writers’ behavior was a necessary part of the work environment.
That glaring blow to jurisprudence is horrifying, even in the unending hell of 2026. (Yes, there are jobs where a direct discussion of sex is important; there is no need for a writer’s assistant to face harassment, however.)
Actually, speaking of the horrors of 2026, Kudrow’s primary reason for her recent press tour has been to promote the return of The Comeback.
Among other things, Kudrow and The Comeback gave us all this amazing barely-parody of recent political horrors: a woman claiming that conservative voices like hers have been “silenced,” each claim made repeatedly and broadcast for all to hear.
Hopefully, she will never again have to contend with toxic coworkers who might berate an actor for flubbing a line.
And hopefully neither she nor her former co-stars will have to deal with creepy colleagues, either. Yikes!