Brooke Shields just revealed an interesting tidbit about one of her most memorable TV roles.
While chatting with PureWow about her new partnership with Colgate Gum Renewal, the actress opened up about how she landed one of her favorite roles—and surprisingly, it has everything to do with one of NBC's most famous sitcoms, Friends.
If you recall, season two's "The One After the Superbowl" featured a number of guest stars, including Chris Isaak, Julia Roberts, Fred Willard and Shields. In the episode, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) receives a letter from Erika Ford (Shields), his mysterious admirer, and is forced to confront her after she shows up at his door unannounced. But when he sees how attractive she is, he takes her out to dinner—and isn't long before he realizes that Erika is quite unstable.
According to Shields, NBC was so impressed by her performance that they decided to offer her her own sitcom, called Suddenly Susan. She explained, "No one had ever seen me in that light before," she told us. "It was because of my Friends episode that NBC wanted to do a show with me as the lead. Had it not been for that crazy part, I don't think anybody necessarily would've known that was what I love to do more than anything."
Shields starred in the sitcom as Susan Keane, an ambitious copy editor whose life is turned upside down when she leaves her rich fiancé at the altar and pursues independence. The series, which lasted for four seasons, earned Shields tons of praise for her performance.
"It was the closest thing to what I could have experienced as a breakthrough," she told us. "Even though I had already been working for almost 30 years, to be at the helm of my own television show and it being based very strongly in comedy was pure joy to me. Every day, I couldn't wait to get to work. Those were my favorite years of being in comedy."
Fingers crossed that we'll get to see even more of Brooke's comedic chops in the near future.
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