Appearing in a guest role on Friends was a huge deal. Millions watched every week, and a single scene could have launched a career. However, the likes of Matt LeBlanc revealed even the most-established actors would struggle on the show. Shooting Friends was unlike anything else, especially with the aura surrounding the show, mixed with a live audience.
Let’s recap who was regarded as the worst, and which actors fans felt like didn’t live up to the hype on Friends. The show also featured guest-stars that complained about the show, and those that weren’t exactly pleasant to deal with in their guest roles. Let’s unveil all of that and more.
Kevin S. Bright Had Regrets Over Sean Penn’s Guest-Role On Friends
Throughout the ten seasons of Friends, fans got to see some of the top actors in the world appear on the show. Christina Applegate, Reese Witherspoon, and Brad Pitt were among the elite guest-stars that received top honors for their respective cameos. However, not all A-list actors lived up, and according to Friends director Kevin S. Bright, Sean Penn turned out to be one of the very worst. So bad, that Bright regretted his casting on the show. Bright specifically called him “a deer in the headlights.”
The Friends director recalled, “I think the least successful one was Sean Penn on the show. Just the style of the production wasn’t what he was used to, doing a show like that, so there was a little deer in the headlight affect.”
Bright added that Friends was in a very ideal position as the top tier actors were coming to them for guest-roles on the show.
“It worked out that it was easy because we didn’t have to come up for parts to suit the cast; we had actors coming to us saying they wanted to be on the show so there were really parts written for them knowing they wanted to do the show,’ Kevin added.
Fans on Reddit also chimed in on their thoughts on the worst cameo during Friends. Unlike Bright’s thoughts, there were other names that were far worse, and in fact, fans note that the cast of Friends was actually excited to appear alongside Penn. One fan wrote, “David was so excited to have Sean there as he thinks he’s an amazing actor. And David’s a potato.”
