Friends Writer Recalls “Dire” Experience Working With The Cast; “They Rarely Had Anything Positive To Say.”

Patty Lin worked as a scriptwriter on Season 7 of the popular sitcom Friends, but the experience was not as joyful as you would imagine.

You would think that being a writer on a massive hit show like Friends would be the dream job and goal of many budding scribes in Hollywood. It seems that for one TV writer that was not necessarily the case, and working with the big name stars of the show was something that she came to dread rather than enjoy.

Friends is one of the most popular shows the last three decades, having initially run for ten seasons, and never been out of syndication since. The proof of the series’ ongoing popularity was further shown with the Friends reunion special on HBO last year, which brought back the main cast for a one-off special to catch up and reminisce about good-times past.

In a new book, though, TV writer Patty Lin, whose other credits also include Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, revealed the not so joyful truth about working on the series, and having to watch her jokes and material being criticised or purposely pushed out by the stars of the show. As shared in an excerpt of her new book, End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood (via Time), Lin recounted the issues she faced when joining the writer’s room on Friends in 2000. She wrote:
“But the novelty of seeing Big Stars up close wore off fast, along with my zeal about breakfast. 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. They all knew how to get a laugh, but if they didn’t like a joke, they seemed to deliberately tank it, knowing we’d rewrite it. Dozens of good jokes would get thrown out just because one of them had mumbled the line through a mouthful of bacon. David and Marta never said, “This joke is funny. The actor just needs to sell it.”

Once the first rewrite was finished, we’d have a run-through on the set, where the actors would rehearse and work out blocking with the director. Then everyone would sit around Monica and Chandler’s apartment and discuss the script. 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. 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.”