Brook Shields is opening up about her time on the hit 1990s sitcom Friends. In a recent interview with The View, the actress shared how she really felt going into the show, what the late Matthew Perry did to prank her on set, how she responded and more. To read her words, keep scrolling!
Brooke Shields on ‘Friends’: Playing the eccentric Erika Ford
Shields starred in one episode of Friends in season 2 entitled “The One After the Super Bowl (Part 1).” In it, she played Erika Ford, a crazy woman who was obsessed with Joey Tribbiani’s (Matt LeBlanc) Days of Our Lives character, Dr. Drake Ramoray.
“You go onto a show that’s so well-oiled and so successful, and I was such a fan: all I wanted was for them to like me,” Shields said on The View. “I just wanted to be funny, but I wasn’t in the group, you know? They were very tight. They had all these inside jokes.”
Shields is, of course, talking about the main six cast members of the shows–Jennifer Aniston (who played Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (who played Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (who played Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (who played Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (who played Chandler Bing), and David Schwimmer (who played Dr. Ross Geller)—whose friendship on and off screen have become some of the most talked about relationships in Hollywood.
Thankfully, though, Shields’s time on the Friends set wasn’t always that nerve-racking because, according to her, Perry did something that would have gotten him “canceled” today.
Brooke Shields and Matthew Perry: A hilarious on-set memory
Perry was very well known for his comedy and improv skills both on and off-screen. He also famously brought this talent to the Friends set and often pulled pranks on his other cast and crew members.
“They had this one inside joke that they did a lot, and Matthew Perry did it,” Shields said. “He would — you couldn’t do it now, you’d get canceled — he would run and throw himself on the floor in front of a girl and pretend to look up her skirt.”
It was reportedly a hit amongst the cast, and in a last-ditch attempt to fit in, Shields did the exact same thing to Perry, saying that she “thought, ‘If I can make him laugh, it’s just gonna feel so good.’”
“I ran so fast from one end of the stage all the way to the other, threw myself on the ground, and pretended to look up his pant leg,” she said. “And everybody was quiet and I’m on the floor and I’m like, ‘I just suck! This is so… I look like a crazy person!’
I’m on the floor for what felt like an hour, but was probably one second, and all of a sudden, he started laughing, and they all started laughing.”
Following that, Shields revealed in her newly released memoir Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old that the cast of Friends then “invited me to have lunch with them and go to the gym on the lot.”
She then wrote how that moment made her feel like she “had made it in Hollywood.”
“And in the episode itself, my willingness to embrace the crazy and go hard for the laugh made an impression, too. The day after the show aired, I got a call asking me to star in my own sitcom, Suddenly Susan.”
Shields memoir is available for purchase now, as is Perry’s—Friends, Lovers and The Big Bad Terrible Thing.
