British actor Olivia Williams opened up about her experience as a guest star on "Friends," describing her time on set of the iconic TV show as "harrowing" and "alarming" in a new interview.
"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,’" "The Crown" alum, 55, told the Independent.
Williams recalled how the actor, whose name she could not remember, aggravated one of the show’s producers.
"At one point, a producer — who shall remain nameless — just yelled at her: ‘You’re not funny,’" Williams claimed. "And she didn’t come back the next day."
Williams, who appeared as a flirty bridesmaid in the second part of the Season 4 finale of "Friends," titled "The One With Ross’ Wedding," described the disappearance of a woman from the sitcom's set as "alarming."
"Oh, And ‘Friends’ was a brand, and you had to fit the brand," she continued.
"You go into hair and makeup and you’re told, ‘There’s a look here, this is what we do.’ And that involved, essentially, plucking off all of your eyebrows."
Williams shared that she would plead with the department to keep her eyebrows.
"Literally, ‘Please don’t take my eyebrows off. I might need them in another job,'" she joked.
"Maybe I’d have a lot more work if I shut up more," Williams added. "I might actually be on some socialist actor blacklist, I don’t know."
Lisa Kudrow, who played the role of quirky Phoebe Buffay on the hit show, previously opened up about her time on "Friends" and how she struggled with her self-image.
While she did not confirm that there was pressure to conform to a specific beauty standard as Williams suggested regarding a certain "look" required of the actors, Kudrow did admit she ended up feeling negative about her body.
"You see yourself on TV and it’s that, Oh, my God, I’m just a mountain of a girl," she told Marc Aaron in 2019 on his "WTF podcast," according to Marie Claire. "I'm already bigger than Courteney [Cox] and Jennifer [Aniston] — bigger, like my bones feel bigger. I just felt like this mountain of a woman next to them."
Kudrow added, "Unfortunately for a woman, if you’re underweight, you look good. And that’s all I ever got. When I was too thin, I was sick all the time. A cold, sinus infection … I was always sick."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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