Kathleen Turner Says She Would No Longer Play Chandler’s Dad on ‘Friends’

Don't expect to see Chandler Bing's dad make a cameo in the Friends reunion special. Well, not with Kathleen Turner in the role, at least. 

The 65-year-old actress appeared on Tuesday night's Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, and opened up about playing drag queen Helena Handbasket, a.k.a. Charles Bing. 

"Of course I wouldn't do it now because there would be real people that would be doing it," she said of real-life drag queens. 

"At the time, one of the co-creators of Friends, I was doing a one-woman show based on Tallulah Bankhead and he came up to see the show in San Francisco and came backstage and said, 'You have to play Chandler's dad,'" she recalled. "I thought, 'A woman playing a man playing a woman, I haven't done that.' So I said yes." 

Though she expressed none of this on Tuesday's show, Turner has previously noted that her three episodes on the beloved sitcom in 2001 weren't exactly enjoyable. 

“I’ll be quite honest, which is my wont: I didn’t feel very welcomed by the cast,” Turner told Vulture in 2018. “I remember I was wearing this difficult sequined gown -- and my high heels were absolutely killing me. I found it odd that none of the actors thought to offer me a seat. Finally, it was one of the older crew members that said, ‘Get Miss Turner a chair.’”

She went on to note, “The Friends actors were such a clique -- but I don’t think my experience with them was unique,. I think it was simply that they were such a tight little group that nobody from the outside mattered.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the six original cast members of Friends are said to be in talks to reunite for an "unscripted reunion special" for HBO Max along with the sitcom's creators, David Crane and Marta Kauffman. 

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