Writer's Assistant on Friends Reveals the Sordid Habits of Some TV Writers

Posted on February 20, 2006

Did you ever see the old Dick Van Dyke Show? Dick, Sally and Morty were the writers on a variety show. They would sit around in the writer's room, toss around ideas, crack jokes and eventually write a great script each week. It was funny and quite G-rated. But apparently, that's not at all what it's like to be a writer on a hit TV show today.

In a sexual harassment lawsuit which The Smoking Gun has reprinted in full, we find out that the writers on the hit TV show Friends spent all their time speculating about the sex lives of Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox, drawing lurid photos, talking trash about every woman they had ever seen and -- wait for it -- wrote entire scenes where they turned the character "Joey" into a serial rapist. The wrote detailed descriptions of what serial rapist Joey would do to his victims, finding it to be hilarious. The writer's assistant who is suing didn't find it at all amusing.

The Smoking Gun says, "The court decision in favor of plaintiff Amaani Lyle, who worked for Friends during 1999, noted that, in depositions, writers and producers acknowledged the use of 'sexually coarse, vulgar, and demeaning language in the workplace.' But that behavior, the Friends crew claimed, was a necessary part of the creative process and helped the show's writing staff to develop better scripts."

You can read the sordid allegations here, but don't say we didn't warn you first: the declaration has crude and offensive descriptions. What a bunch of juvenile idiots.