Jennifer Grey has confessed that she passed down the opportunity to return to Friends since her initial appearance caused her “bad anxiety.”
The Dirty Dancing actress, 63, played Rachel’s high school best friend Mindy in the first season of Friends, but the experience left her uneasy due to multiple last-minute alterations made by producers.
‘I was a fan of the show, and I got the call to do it. Then when I did it, I had such bad anxiety because they kept changing the script,’ she told MediaVillage.
‘It’s very hard to be a guest star because you’re not a part of it, and you’re really trying to figure it all out.
‘They were trying to figure out what the character was, what the scene was, and it was changing, and changing, and changing.
‘It all made me so anxious that I could barely do it.’
Jennifer sought assistance for her anxiety after filming, but when she was called back to repeat her role in the successful sitcom, she declined and was replaced by Jana Marie Hupp.
‘When they asked me to come back, I said I couldn’t,’ she continued. ‘They got someone else to play the role.
‘It makes me sad that I would say no to continuing on Friends or doing Saturday Night Live because of my anxiety.
‘The truth is, I wished I had people to help me navigate that kind of fear. But I couldn’t be there until I was there.’
Jennifer isn’t the only celebrity who has expressed dissatisfaction with their appearance on Friends.
Kathleen Turner, who starred as Chandler’s transgender mother, said she ‘didn’t feel very welcomed by the cast’.
Friends is available to stream on Netflix UK.
