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Turns out, working on Friends wasn't always easy. One of the show's writers revealed how the cast would intentionally “tank” jokes.
In an excerpt from her new book (via Time), Patty Lin reflected on her Friends experience. She discussed table reads, which has three purposes according to her — “for the actors to judge the script (so they could gripe about it later)”; “for the showrunners to decide what didn't work and needed to be rewritten”; “and for the writer of the episode to feel both bloatedly important and sickeningly self-conscious.”
She then claimed she was initially “excited” about partaking in the table reads that included the likes of Jennifer Anniston, Courtney Cox, and David Schwimmer (and the catered breakfast). But that wore off fast.
“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 recalled. “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 [Crane] and Marta [Kauffman] never said, ‘This joke is funny. The actor just needs to sell it.'”
She continued, “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,” Lin said. “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.”
This would then result in hours of rewrites for Friends. Lin recalled a time when she fell asleep and woke up to find the writers working on the same joke.
Patty Lin was known for her work on Freaks and Geeks prior to Friends. She would then write a couple of episodes of Friends before working on other projects including Breaking Bad.
