While Friends followed six close pals living their best years in Manhattan, it turns out things weren’t so friendly behind the scenes.
Patty Lin has revealed in her new memoir End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood that working on Friends certainly wasn’t as picturesque as one might think. Lin, who worked on Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking The writer, who worked on the series from 2000 – 2001, says the opportunity was too good to pass up, especially as Lin had only worked in the industry for two years.Bad, got the call to work on the seventh season of Friends.
“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.”
Lin adds that out of the 14 writers, most of whom were men, she was the only minority, leading her to feel ‘imposter syndrome’ on a daily basis.
“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 recognizable credit,” she adds. To remember the laughter he’d brought to the world, many fans took to binge watching the Friends series.
However, one scene in particular begun to rub a few fans the wrong way – with some even going on to say that the scene is now rather ‘eerie’.
The scene in question is from episode 5 of the seventh series that aired back in 2000, which shows Monica and Chandler trying to get an engagement photo…after well, getting engaged.
Chandler is simply incapable of pulling a good face for the picture, smiling in the most off-putting way possible, with Monica growing more and more frustrated as she attempts to get a good smile from him. She then says: “Chandler, what is the matter with your face. This picture is meant to say Geller and Bing to be married not local woman saves drowning moron.”
When the cameraman starts laughing, Monica snaps at him and says: “Hey, don’t laugh at him, he is my drowning moron.”
And over on social media, some fans said they feel the joke hits a little too close to home now. “They gotta take this scene out of the show, man. They pretty much predicted the future,” wrote another.
“Nah they gotta cut this scene out now,” a third commented.
