Working on Friends during the sitcom’s heyday may have looked like a dream process, however for former TV writer Patty Lin, that wasn’t the case.
“My disillusionment [with the business] had begun at my very first writing activity but was once momentarily staved off through a good enjoy at Freaks and Geeks,” Lin writes in her upcoming memoir, End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood, by means of an excerpt from Time. “Then came Friends.”
Lin documents her ups and downs as a TV writer in the book, revealing that her stint on season 7 of Friends from 2000 to 2001 was once one of the most toughest assessments of her occupation. While she was once “excited” to fulfill the core solid — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc — Lin briefly modified her song.
“The novelty of seeing Big Stars up close wore off rapid, at the side of my zeal about breakfast,” Lin confesses in her memoir, noting that table reads and the accompanying loose breakfasts with the show’s leads grew to become sour. “The actors seemed unhappy to be chained to a drained old display once they may well be branching out, and I felt like they were continuously wondering how each given script would specifically serve them.”
Aniston, 54, printed in a 2004 Farewell to Friends particular that she almost didn’t return to the display for season 10. “I sought after it to end when folks nonetheless beloved us and we were on a high. And then I additionally was feeling like, ‘How a lot more of Rachel do I have in me?’” she stated at the time.
Lin recollects in her e-book that she felt disheartened when a joke or a line was once minimize on the display for the reason that actor allegedly didn’t decide to the bit — or idea they knew better.
“They all knew methods to get a laugh, but if they didn’t like a shaggy dog story, they gave the impression to intentionally tank it, knowing we’d rewrite it,” Lin claims. “Dozens of good jokes would get thrown out just because one in all them had mumbled the road by way of a mouthful of bacon. [Creators] David [Crane] and Marta [Kauffman] never said, ‘This joke is funny. The actor simply needs to promote it.’”
Lin explains that when the table read and next rewrites, the staff would set up for a run-through.
“Then everybody would sit around Monica and Chandler’s apartment and talk about the script. This used to be the actors’ first alternative to voice their opinions, which they did vociferously,” she unearths. “They infrequently had the rest sure to say, and after they brought up problems, they didn’t suggest feasible solutions. Seeing themselves as guardians in their characters, they often argued that they would never do or say such-and-such. That used to be every so often helpful, however general, those periods had a dire, competitive quality that lacked all of the levity you’d expect from the making of a sitcom.”
After run-throughs, the writers did more rewrites “and labored into the wee hours, endlessly rewriting stuff that used to be humorous the primary time,” Lin claims, stating that when she used to be hired, she made positive the creators knew she didn’t have a comedy writing background.
“I attempted to contribute to the rewrites, but my power used to be solving tale problems — not pitching jokes,” she writes. “Being surrounded by means of an elite cadre of comedy writers had eroded my self-confidence.”
Elsewhere within the book, Lin compares writing on Friends after being within the industry for handiest two years as “going instantly to the Olympics after simply studying to skate.” Lin also attributes one of the team’s fatigue — in addition to the forged’s frustrations — to Friends being in its seventh season when she came on board.
“Trust me, any display that makes it to season 7 is hurting for concepts,” she quips. “Much of the time, the writers’ room was like an never-ending cocktail party the place we had run out of polite issues to speak about. And so we mentioned sex. Constantly.”
Friends aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004 and came to an finish after 10 wildly popular seasons. Lin, who wrote for Friends simplest that unmarried season, later worked on Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad ahead of stepping back from TV writing in 2008. Looking again, Lin unearths that she “didn’t be told that a lot” from operating on the hit sitcom, apart from that she “never sought after to paintings on a sitcom again.”
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She provides: “But the selection were transparent at the time. And, for higher or worse, Friends would remain my most recognizable credit.”
End Credits hits bookshelves on Tuesday, August 29.
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