Revered British actress Olivia Williams, most well-known for her roles in The Crown, The Sixth Sense, The Father and Rushmore, is opening up about one of her more trying experiences in Hollywood — as a guest star on the NBC hit Friends back in 1998.
Williams revealed in an interview with The Independent that it wasn't all fun and games when it came to her on-set experience working on the beloved sitcom for its two-part season 4 finale, The One with Ross’ Wedding (in which David Schwimmer's Ross character infamously utters Rachel's name instead of his bride-to-be Emily's from the altar).
Williams had a pretty minimal role for someone of her talents, playing a flirty bridesmaid who hits on Joey, but that wasn't the source of her consternation.
When asked about previous unflattering remarks she had made about her time on the show, Williams replied, “Well, just as an example, I was taken to the studio in a shared car with a wonderful actress whose character, I think, was called ‘Old Woman.'”
Williams couldn't remember the actual name of the actor, but stressed that she was “distinguished” and “very good.” Williams continued that at one point, “a producer – who shall remain nameless – just yelled at her: ‘You’re not funny!' And she didn’t come back the next day. So that was alarming.”
She then told the outlet, “Friends was a brand, and you had to fit the brand.”
“You go into hair and make-up and you’re told, ‘There’s a look here, this is what we do,'” Williams elaborated.
“And that involved, essentially, plucking off all of your eyebrows,” she continued. She then begged, “Please don’t take my eyebrows off, I might need them in another job… That’s the sense in which it was harrowing.”
As her interviewer notes in The Independent article, Williams has a history of not holding back when it comes to her unflattering experiences in show biz.
“”Maybe I’d have a lot more work if I shut up more,” Williams joked. “I might actually be on some socialist actor blacklist, I don’t know…”
Williams apparently once called American television “a combined piranha pit and cesspool”.
She has also name-checked co-stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who she starred with in the serial killer thriller Sabotage. She said the two of them actually got along well, though it was due to her “advantage, or disadvantage, of not having large breasts.” She also begged an interviewer not to watch the film.
Sounds like Williams had a much better experience playing Queen Camilla on The Crown. When asked whether she was still happy she played the controversial Camilla, Williams stressed, “Oh, absolutely.”
“Being swept off to stately homes around the UK with a fabulous wig on was all great fun,” she continued.
That character was still not without its challenges though. “I did have queasy moments at the time about whether the things we were depicting would make life more difficult or less difficult for people whose privacy has been so horribly intruded upon,” Williams admitted.
“But I think, by any metric, The Crown was empathetic – while telling the story as drama,” she added.
Good to know a talented actress like Olivia Williams has had some positive experiences in the entertainment industry for at least one of her more famous roles, but it seems her stint on Friends was definitely not one of them.
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