‘Friends’ writer claims ‘unhappy’ cast deliberately ruined jokes – National | 24CA News
For former TV author Patty Lin, engaged on the smash sitcom Friends wasn’t the “dream job” she anticipated it to be.
In her upcoming memoir End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood, Lin mentioned the star-studded solid of Friends — together with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Matthew Perry — would “deliberately tank” jokes, realizing it will set off a rewrite.
Lin was a author on Season 7 of Friends from 2000 to 2001. Her different TV credit embody Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad.
“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,” Lin wrote in an excerpt of her memoir printed by Time.
Though Lin was a dramatic author, not a joke author, she knew when she was supplied the Friends writing spot, she couldn’t flip it down. Lin mentioned the high-pressure gig left her with imposter syndrome, and the concern she could have been employed partly due to a variety initiative at NBC to convey on extra writers of color.
Lin recalled that the big workforce of Friends writers had been “cliquey,” just like the “preppy rich kids in my high school who shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch and drove brand-new convertibles.”
Lin mentioned her pleasure to be engaged on Friends “wore off fast.” During desk reads with the solid, she claimed that “dozens of good jokes would get thrown out” as a result of a lead actor “mumbled the line through a mouthful of bacon.”
“Seeing themselves as guardians of their characters, they often argued that they would never do or say such-and-such,” Lin wrote. “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 mentioned the celebs would “vociferously” voice their grievances with every script.
“They rarely had anything positive to say, and when they brought up problems, they didn’t suggest feasible solutions.”
Lin mentioned she “didn’t learn that much” at Friends, save for one lesson: “I never wanted to work on a sitcom again.”
Lin will not be the one one to criticize Friends because it led to 2004. In March, Aniston, who performed Rachel Green, mentioned fashionable audiences would doubtless not approve of the jokes uttered on the sitcom.
“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive,” she mentioned.
Aniston blamed the offensiveness on a mix of “things that were never intentional” and parts of this system that simply lacked thought.
Friends, a comedy about six younger folks in New York, has lengthy since been criticized for a scarcity of variety. All of the present’s primary characters are white. While actors of color appeared sparsely in brief cameo roles, probably the most distinguished, non-white actor on the present, Aisha Tyler (who performed Charlie Wheeler), appeared in solely 9 episodes.
Some of the jokes in Friends have additionally been labelled transphobic or homophobic.
Friends started in 1994. It is among the most worthwhile sitcoms ever created, bringing in reportedly US$1.4 billion since its preliminary debut.
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