It’s been over 20 years since the last episode of Friends aired, and yet the show keeps finding new ways to make headlines. However, this time, it’s not a reunion rumour or a streaming milestone. It’s Lisa Kudrow, speaking to The Times of London, pulling back the curtain on what was actually happening in the writers’ room while the rest of us were busy watching what six mates were doing in a coffee shop. What Kudrow has revealed isn’t a feel-good story; in fact, it’s far from it.

What is the latest Lisa Kudrow Friends controversy?

Kudrow, who played the wonderfully unhinged Phoebe Buffay across all ten seasons, told the paper that she had to endure “mean stuff” from the writing staff, a team she noted was “mostly men”. The revelations cover two distinct flavours of bad behaviour: the kind directed at the cast and the kind that happened when the cast wasn’t in the room.

On the first count, Kudrow described how the writers would reprimand the cast for forgetting or messing up the lines during live tapings. “Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response, they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f***ing read? She’s not even trying. She f***ed up my line.’ These were people working on one of the most-watched sitcoms on the planet, and that, apparently, was how they spoke about their lead actors.

Then there’s what was going on during the late-night writing sessions. According to Kudrow, “And we know that back in the room, the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney. It was intense.”

To her credit, Kudrow seems to have developed a remarkably pragmatic coping mechanism. She described the treatment as “brutal” but said she didn’t let it get to her, reasoning that since most of the bad behaviour happened behind closed doors, it ultimately didn’t affect her. “Say what you like about me behind my back,” she recalled thinking, “because then it doesn’t matter.” It’s a very Phoebe Buffay approach to workplace toxicity, in a way.

The problematic history of Friends’ writers

But the thing is, this wasn’t entirely unknown. The conduct of the Friends writing room was actually dragged into the legal spotlight back in the early 2000s. A woman named Amaani Lyle, who had worked as a writer’s assistant on the show during its sixth season in 1999, filed a sexual harassment case against Warner Bros. Television. She claimed that the writers regularly made sexual and racist remarks. And as the person responsible for taking notes on everything said in the room, she was forced to document all of it.

The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against Lyle, deciding that the coarse behaviour was a necessary part of the creative work environment. Yes, a court determined that being crude and sexually explicit was simply what writers had to do to make a sitcom. One wonders what the ruling would look like if the same case were brought today.

The entertainment industry has spent the better part of the last decade reckoning with exactly this kind of systemic boys’-club behaviour. And Friends, for all its cultural warmth and nostalgic glow, has not been immune to scrutiny. The show’s track record on diversity, both on screen and in the writers’ room, has been criticised for years. Friends will always be comfort television for millions of people. But it sure wasn’t as comfortable for the female cast of the show.

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