Jennifer Grey says anxiety stopped her reprising ‘Friends’ role

By Issy Ronald, CNN

Jennifer Grey has revealed that “bad anxiety” prevented her from reprising her role in “Friends,” as she opened up about her time on the show.

Although she was initially excited, as “a fan of the show,” Grey told website MediaVillage that when it came to shooting her scenes, she “had such bad anxiety because they kept changing the script.

“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,” she added. “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.”

Grey appeared toward the end of the show’s first season as Mindy, Rachel’s maid of honor and best friend, who had an affair with and eventually married Rachel’s jilted ex, Barry the orthodontist.

The role was later recast, with Jana Marie Hupp appearing in the final episode of season two, “The One with Barry and Mindy’s Wedding.”

“When they asked me to come back, I said I couldn’t,” Grey said. “They got someone else to play the role. It makes me sad that I would say no to continuing on Friends…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.”

Grey, best known for her roles in “Dirty Dancing” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” also recalls that anxiety prevented her from pursuing other career opportunities, including hosting “Saturday Night Live.”

“I didn’t know at the time what was going on with me,” she said. “But I had a lot of performance anxiety, and I just didn’t understand at that time that I needed help in the anxiety department.”

But Grey says she is now able to draw some positives from the experience, adding that “everything you do in life, especially the hard things, the really painful, difficult things, are usually the things that are the most instructive and helpful.”

The-CNN-Wire
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