Perhaps in the inevitable modern reboot of Friends, an episode dubbed “The One Where A Methed-Up Andre Agassi Smashes All His Trophies” will be made.
Brooke Shields, the actress, and supermodel, has probably had countless messed-up stories in her 45 years in the spotlight. Still, it’s difficult to imagine many of them being as funny and terrifying as the time her appearance on the beloved NBC sitcom caused a “marital dispute” resulting in a bunch of Grand Slam trophies being bashed into a thousand pieces. Shields remembered the filming of the Friends episode that launched her sitcom career and prompted her then-husband, tennis great Andre Agassi, to attack his many accolades in a fit of rage in a recent New Yorker interview.
If a sitcom episode could ever make the average person lose their cool and destroy their most treasured belongings, it would be one with a clip show.
Shields made her Friends debut in 1996 with “The One After the Super Bowl,” a double-length episode in which she played a crazed stalker obsessed with Joey Tribbiani‘s Days of Our Lives character Dr. Drake Ramoray and thinks Joey is his character in real life. Her performance was so well received that she was given the lead part in the sitcom. Suddenly Susan later that year — and yet, one audience member at the taping that night didn’t think the show was very good.
“In the scene, I’m supposed to lick Joey’s fingers, because they’re the hands of a genius, and I want to devour them, and I’m a nut,” Shields remembered as he sat in the live studio audience. In the midst of filming, Agassi “stormed out,” and when Shields found him later, “he said, ‘Everybody’s making fun of me.'” You embarrassed me with that behaviour.’ ‘It’s comedy!’ I exclaim. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Brooke Shields
As it turned out, Agassi’s erratic behavior could have a very dark reason. “I later learned that he was addicted to crystal meth at the time, so that irrational behavior had to do with it,” Shields explained. Agassi rushed to their house in a rage and “smashed all his trophies,” a reaction Shields described as “petulant.”
When they’re angry, some tennis players smash their rackets; the greats, on the other hand, destroy trophies.
