‘Friends’ writer recalls it wasn’t a ‘dream job’

CNN
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Former TV writer Patty Lynn says that while working on Friends “will continue to be my most well-known asset”, that doesn’t mean she loved her time on the hit show.

In her upcoming memoir, End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood, Lynn writes that after working as a television writer for a decade, she left Hollywood in 2008 after writing scripts for Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives, and Desperate Housewives. and “bad”.

When she was given the opportunity to write for Friends, she couldn’t say no. She wrote for the seventh season of the show from 2000 to 2001.

“My disappointment [with the business] I started out at my first writing job but was momentarily sidelined by a positive experience at Freaks and Geeks, Lynn writes in an excerpt from her book he published. time.

She says she was excited to meet the cast. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc.

“Seeing the big stars up close, along with my excitement about breakfast, quickly faded,” Lynn writes, adding, “The actors seemed unhappy to be chained to a tired old show when they might have branched out, and I felt like they were constantly wondering.” How each particular text will serve them specifically.

Lane claims that if the cast didn’t like the joke, they would “deliberately leave it out, knowing we’d rewrite it”.

She writes: “Dozens of good jokes are thrown away simply because someone muttered the line through a piece of bacon.”

Then everyone would sit around Monica and Chandler’s apartment and discuss the script. This was the first opportunity for the cast to express their opinions, which they did out loud. “They rarely had anything positive to say, and when they brought up problems, they didn’t suggest meaningful solutions. Since they see themselves as guardians of their personalities, they have often argued that they would not do or say such and such. It was helpful at times, but overall, these sessions had a horrible, aggressive quality that lacked all the lightness you’d expect from the sitcom industry.

Lynn adds that there were groups among employees and that her days were 12-hour days. She suffered from imposter syndrome because, “as the only Asian writer,” she wondered if she was a variety employee.

“I later learned that imposter syndrome is a common experience of ethnic minorities who work in fields that lack representation,” Lane writes.

In the end, Lin says, “I didn’t learn much, except that I never wanted to work on a sitcom again. But the choice was clear at the time. For better or worse, friends will remain my most popular asset.