Friends' Most Unpopular Character's Actress Had BTS Issues with the Show’s Director
Helen Baxendale, the actress behind Ross’s second wife, Emily, was not really liked by Friends’ director James Burrows: in fact, he almost fired her over their issues!
For any and all Friends fans, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Emily, Ross’s second wife from Britain, was admittedly the least-liked character on the show. Back when Friends was still airing, fans were desperately rooting for Ross to get back together with Rachel, and the prospect of him marrying someone else was hated.
But even besides not being exactly loved by the audience, Helen Baxendale, the actress who played Emily, had her fair share of problems with the show. For one, she was really struggling with her privacy after appearing in Friends and eventually decided that life was not for her. Also, she had a conflict with the director.
As James Burrows revealed in his memoir Directed By James Burrows, he was very much not happy with Baxendale’s performance and her lack of chemistry with Ross. The director even strongly hinted that he was willing to fire the actress and find someone else to play the part of Emily, and he wouldn’t done it if he only could.
According to Burrows, the main issue was that Helen Baxendale was lacking the main ingredients for the “Ross’s girlfriend” recipe: she was “nice, but not particularly funny,” and had no chemistry with her partner. "Schwimmer had no one to bounce off. It was like clapping with one hand,” the director wrote in his memoir.
"Often, you can’t recast, because of tight shooting deadlines or other logistical considerations. <...> You need someone who gets laughs. Sometimes you start an arc and it ain’t working out, so you have to get rid of that person. If it’s a day player, it’s a quick goodbye. If there’s chemistry, the writers go to work to figure out some way of keeping the actor,” Burrows explained.
Since he couldn’t recast Emily because of the timing, the director and the actress had to put up with each other, but neither was exactly happy about that. But fortunately for them both, Ross and Emily’s story was not exactly long, and after a few episodes, they parted ways… And the audience got new hope that Ross and Rachel would be together.
Source: Directed By James Burrows