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Were they on a break? It’s the age-old question that’s plagued Friends viewers for almost 30 years – and now Lisa Kudrow has given her blunt verdict.
Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay in the long-running Nineties sitcom, was asked about the plotline in which Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) slept with another woman while going through a rough patch with girlfriend Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston).
Ross later makes it clear he believed he and Rachel had broken up at the time of his encounter with Chloe. Rachel, however, disagrees and considers that Ross’s behaviour amounts to cheating.
Were Ross and Rachel on a break? ‘Friends’ fans have debated this since the 1990s (NBC)
Throughout the show, the sentence “we were on a break” is uttered several more times, becoming one of the sitcom’s most memorable one-liners.
Whether or not he actually was is the source of intense debate, and Kudrow has now waded in, stating: “It’s beyond break or not. He was a bad boyfriend.”
Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Kudrow admitted she was afraid to discuss the contentious topic, but when the audience applauded, she said in relief: “Oh, you agree! Oh, I feel better. Thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you, all of you.”
Kudrow continued: “She shouldn’t have gotten back with him because he was horrible.
“To me, it’s like, I don’t care if he slept with three other women or no other women. You had a crisis at work, so you weren’t available for a few nights, and he flipped out.”
Lisa Kudrow waded into the Ross and Rachel debate on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ (YouTube)
When asked if Schwimmer, who previously defended Ross’s actions, shared this view, Kudrow said: “He knows now.”
Kudrow recently opened up about the “tense” scrutiny faced by Friends’ female cast members, also including Courteney Cox (Monica), due to the mostly male writers’ room.
More than 20 years on from Friends’ finale, Kudrow, who currently stars in HBO sitcom The Comeback, told The Times there was “mean stuff going on behind the scenes”.
“Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response, they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f***ing read? She’s not even trying. She f***ed up my line’,” Kudrow said.
“And we know that back in the room, the guys would be up late discussing their sexual fantasies about Jennifer and Courteney. It was intense.”
She added that while it “could be brutal”, the writers were up all night writing on the sitcom. “These guys – and it was mostly men in there – were sitting up until 3am trying to write the show, so my attitude was, ‘Say what you like about me behind my back because then it doesn’t matter’.”