The 'Dirty Dancing' star admits she got 'bad anxiety' when guest-starring as Rachel's friend Mindy on the hit sitcom because 'they kept changing the script.'
- Apr 24, 2023
AceShowbiz - Jennifer Grey suffered from "anxiety" during her time on "Friends". The 63-year-old actress played Mindy, a high school friend of Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel, in one episode of the long-running sitcom, but Jennifer never felt comfortable with her role.
She told MediaVillage, "I was a fan of the show, and I got the call to do it. 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," the "Duck Duck Goose" star admitted.
Jennifer initially struggled to understand her anxiety. However, over time, she came to realize that she needed some form of help. She shared, "I didn't know at the time what was going on with me. 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."
Jennifer actually rejected the opportunity to reprise the role of Mindy at a later date. The veteran actress, who starred alongside Patrick Swayze in "Dirty Dancing, recalled, "When they asked me to come back, I said I couldn't."
"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," she lamented. "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."
