Morgan Fairchild Recalls Playing Chandler’s Mom on ‘Friends’: ‘It Was Always Great Fun’

Actress Morgan Fairchild — who played Chandler’s mother, Nora Bing, on Friends — recalled having “so much fun” on the hit TV show in an exclusive interview with Closer Weekly.

“They always gave us such great writing and such great lines and stuff, so I loved doing that,” she gushes. “That was fun because when they first offered it to me to play Chandler’s mom, a lot of my [girlfriends who are actresses] said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that. You’re too young to play that guy’s mother. And I stopped and I thought, oh no, no. At some point, you’ve got to make that transition to playing the mother. So I said, yes.”

One thing Morgan enjoyed the most about her role was the script. “At times, when you’re a guest star on the show, they would sort of just give you marginal stuff to do because they’re writing for their lead characters and there were six lead characters. So you know, they’re really writing hard for them. But, they were always great for all [of] us guest stars,” she explains. “All the parents [and] all the dates. They always wrote great stuff for everybody.”

After appearing on the show in 1995, 1998 and again in 2001, the Golden Globe nominee would “sometimes” see herself on TV when the networks would play Friends re-runs on air. “You’ll stumble across one and will say, hey, this is one I was in,” Morgan, who is starring in LOGOtv’s new soap opera Mélange, laughs. “But the [cast] are good and they’re so good together.”

In May 2004, Friends went off the air. Since the show ended, Morgan has starred in the 2014 series Hot in Cleveland with Betty White and has played Anjelica Deveraux in Days of Our Lives. But through it all, she hasn’t stayed in contact with anyone from Friends. 

“Not really,” Morgan reveals when asked if she touched base with her former costars, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. “They’ve all gone on to other things in their careers. I think they stay in touch with each other. I don’t think they stay in touch with the rest of us [guest stars]. But it was always great fun.”

For more information on Morgan’s new project, Mélange, which is airing on LOGOtv’s digital platforms, please visit melangetheseries.com.

Reporting by Diana Cooper