Brooke Shields recalls huge fight with ex-husband Andre Agassi over her flirty 'Friends' cameo

vt-author-image

By Phoebe Egoroff

Article saved!Article saved!

Brooke Shields has claimed to have gotten into a huge fight with her ex-husband Andre Agassi over her appearance in the hit sitcom Friends.

The 57-year-old made the revelation during a recent interview with The New Yorker, where she discussed being sexualized as a child star, and how she's survived growing up in the limelight.

She also claimed that her seemingly innocent appearance on Friends in 1996 - in which, she appeared as the obsessed stalker of Matt LeBlanc's character Joey Tribbiani - had explosive consequences once she returned home to her husband, former world number one tennis player Andre Agassi.

The pair had been together for three years at the point, having become an item in 1993. They eventually wed in 1997 and divorced in 1999.

wp-image-1263202739 size-full
Shields and Agassi pictured together at the US Open in 1994. Credit: colaimages / Alamy

In her interview, Shields described how her then-boyfriend had become enraged after viewing her cameo on the sitcom, where she maniacally licked LeBlanc's finger in one scene after exposing herself as his stalker.

"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 recalled during the interview. "Andre was in the audience supporting me, and he stormed out. He said, 'Everybody's making fun of me. You made a fool of me by that behavior.' I'm, like, 'It's comedy! What is the matter with you?'"

The actress then continued, adding that Agassi had broken all of his sporting trophies because he felt embarrassed.

Shields then revealed she wasn't aware until years later that he had apparently been abusing crystal meth at the time. "So that irrational behavior I'm sure had something to do with that," she said.

wp-image-1263202754 size-full
Shields pictured in 2018. Credit: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy

Shields recounted the time Agassi had told her of his drug problem in her 2014 memoir There Was a Little Girl.

"He explained to me that for the first whole part of our relationship, he had been addicted to crystal meth," Shields, who is now married to TV writer Chris Henchy, wrote. "I was the one who had supported him unconditionally when he told me that he was basically bald and had been wearing hairpieces most of his adult life. Why should this have been any different?"

Sadly, and despite tying the knot, Shields admitted that she had known early on in their relationship that they wouldn't work out.

"It hit me all of a sudden - I knew I had made a mistake," she wrote in her memoir. "For the next two years we saw very little of each other. I was working on my show, Suddenly Susan, and he was playing at various tournaments. He alienated me when he lost and was on to the next tournament after he won. We were drifting apart."

Featured image credit: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy