Jennifer Grey made an appearance during the first season of Friends but her time on the show was surrounded by anxiety.
“I was a fan of the show, and I got the call to do it,” she told Media Village in an interview. “Then when I did it, I 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. 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 played Mindy, Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) former bestie and maid of honor who was having a secret affair with her fiancé Barry. When Rachel escapes her wedding in the pilot episode, Barry takes Mindy on the honeymoon he was originally going on with Rachel. When Barry and Rachel meet up again, they talk things out and opt to give their relationship another shot. However, this time, Mindy is engaged to marry Barry and Rachel turns out to be the other woman. Mindy and Rachel then team up to confront Barry and his cheating ways.
The Dirty Dancing star said that while on Friends she “had a lot of performance anxiety” and although she didn’t know what was happening with herself, she knew she needed help.
Grey was asked back and reprise her role on the successful NBC sitcom but declined to make a comeback with the role recast with Jana Marie Hupp.
“When they asked me to come back, I said I couldn’t,” she said. “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.”
Despite not returning to Friends, Grey said she learned from the experience adding, “In life, I always learn more from things that you feel like a failure at, and the successes, you don’t learn as much, although, they might be fun. But it’s all a part of life.”