A director of the legendary 90’s sitcom “Friends” didn’t hold back any punches after calling one in all its forged members on the show “not funny,” the Each day Mail reported.
Director James Burrow had quite a bit to get off his chest when he admitted that UK actress Helen Baxendale, who played Emily Waltham in 14 episodes of the show, couldn’t gel with other forged members because she wasn’t as comedic.
“She was nice but not particularly funny,” Burrow said.
“In sitcoms and any style of romantic comedy, the funny is just as essential because the chemistry,” he continued.
Baxendale joined the long-lasting sitcom, which first aired on Sept. 1994, during its fourth season.
She played an integral role on the show because the girlfriend and fiancée of David Schwimmer’s character, Ross.
Ross mistakenly said his ex Rachel’s name as a substitute of Emily’s during their wedding within the Season 4 finale, dooming the on-screen relationship
In earlier seasons, Schwimmer’s Ross was in a relationship with Jennifer Aniston’s lead character, Rachel.
Burrow claimed Baxendale’s so-called “nice” demeanor just didn’t cut it for him, where he made the purpose in emphasis that “any recent girlfriend for Ross needed to be as funny as Rachel.”
“Schwimmer had nobody to bounce off. It was like clapping with one hand,” Burrow said.
“You would like someone who gets laughs. Sometimes you begin an arc and it ain’t figuring out, so you’ve gotten to do away with that person. If it’s a day player, it’s a fast goodbye.”
But soon enough, after only appearing in Seasons 4 and 5, Baxendale called it quits after she became pregnant along with her first child and moved back to the UK.
Since then, she spoke about her tenure on “Friends” with the Sunday Mirror in 2012, describing her time on the show as a “strange surreal little blip in my life.”
“People expect since it is named ‘Friends’ that everybody was great friends, but they were real professionals,” Baxendale said.
“They’d been doing it for years and I used to be one in all many guest stars to look.”
Over the course of time on the show, Baxendale realized her vital role on the show was parlaying over into the true world — and never in the best way she desired.
Baxendale said the show made her more identifiable than ever.
“You couldn’t walk down the road to purchase a pint of milk. In truth, you couldn’t go anywhere. It was unattainable to combine with the gang, and do what atypical people do,” she admitted to the Mail in 2012.
“I saw [the fame] as a gilded prison. It was something I wasn’t prepared for,” she said.
Baxendale went on to say how she didn’t regret coming back to the US after she headed back home to the UK to restart her life.
“Fame just didn’t slot in with my life. I don’t know the way much would have come from staying within the States anyway. I didn’t need to live in America, when all my circumstances were leading me back to Britain. I don’t regret it for a minute.”
