By 1996, Julia Roberts was one of the largest movie stars in the world. This, after all, was a post-pretty woman, so when Roberts' guest starred in the NBC sitcom "Friends," she was not an unknown actress, but the director of the show remembered that Roberts was nervous and embodied "stage fear in real life."

To be fair, television was a different medium than film, and just as Roberts was a hit movie star, Friends was a well-intentioned hit TV show two years after its 1994 premiere. Director Michael Lembeck said Roberts, who he called "the biggest star in the world at the moment," "had his hands a little too tight when shooting," according to Entertainment Weekly. (Roberts starred in the two-part friends episode "Those after the Super Bowl", for reference.)

It was the live studio audience that made Roberts a little uneasy, Rembeck said in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times: "What's funny with Julia is that she hasn't been on stage since she was 15 years old, and she's been [another actor] on God's Agnes Broadway." "It was a great opportunity," Rembeck said. "On the night of the shooting, we were just holding hands and watching the process," she said, "It's going to be gangrene if she squeezes my right hand tight.""It was just anxiety, you know, stage phobia in real life. As good as she was during the week, she is not running.

Not surprisingly, "Roberts was Suzy, Matthew Perry's childhood classmate of Chandler [Bing, his character on the show] who he once ended up killing it as a bewildered person by pulling up her skirt in front of the entire school," Entertainment Week reported. Lee writes. "Adult Susie agrees to a date with Chandler, tricking everyone's favorite cynics into taking off their clothes and putting on their underwear in the restaurant bathroom. Susie finally gets her sweet revenge by stealing all his clothes and leaving him stranded."

Rembeck said the nerves waned as Roberts rolled, and the live audience actually helped Roberts get through his anxiety. "So we've been rehearsing all week, and Julia and Matthew are enjoying time not only on set but also off set, and they get on the couch for the first scene and she's green," Lembeck said. [John] Travolta's dad had this expression: "It's like paint coming out of a rubber band. So, just apply and stretch the rubber band, and the paint will begin to chip. That's what I saw with Julia.

He said, "She was doing the scene, and she got her first and 2nd laugh." And Matthew flubs the line, and the audience loves it. You can see her whole posture change and you see this bubble coming out over her head: "Oh, yeah, I know this. I remember how to do this."And she just became a beast in the subsequent scene."

Proving how relevant Roberts really is, Lembeck also said that in addition to Perry, Roberts was a movie star while on the set of the show, which also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudlow, Matt Leblanc and David Schwimmer. He told the publication that he did not display any of his actions. "When I first met her, I walked by Julia," Rembeck said. "I didn't know it was her. [she] had filamentous hair.; Maybe woke up without makeup, taller than expected — but what a doll. She laughed harder than anyone during the week. She had so much fun.”