Jean-Claude Van Damme says he’s ’ashamed’ of his cameo on Friends
The legendary action star says it was a 'strange' experience.
Stewart Perrie
The legendary TV show Friends had plenty of celebrity cameos during its hey-day.
Bruce Willis, Winona Ryder, Reece Witherspoon, Alec Baldwin and Ben Stiller all agreed to be on the long-running series.
Another big name at the time was Jean-Claude Van Damme.
He appeared on the most watched episode of Friends ever, which was called 'The One After The Super Bowl'.
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The name had nothing to do with the plot and just aired directly after Super Bowl game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Understandably, there were a lot of people who tuned in to watch the instalment; 52.9 million to be exact, which was nearly 500,000 more than the series' final episode.
The writers knew they had to pull out all the stops to make it a memorable moment.
So they had Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox) fight over a new love interest.
That happened to be Jean-Claude Van Damme.
However, on reflection, the action star cringes when he thinks about the cameo.
"My acting is so bad. I look so like a ham. Like, ‘Hey, girls'. It’s like, I’m ashamed of myself," he said to the New York Post.
"So then I was on the set, and those girls, they go and they kiss me and they kiss me on the lips. I didn’t know what to do, how to do… It was strange.
"They were very nice."
He had nothing but praise for the cast and crew but admits he wasn't really familiar with Friends when he agreed to the role.
"I didn’t know much about the show," he said.
"So when I go to the show, I see those two beautiful girls and they say this is the hottest show right now in the world. So I was very glad."
He added: "They [Aniston and Courteney] were very open because they did the show every day.
"So for them, I enter into a place where everything is working like a very well-trained mechanic engine," he continued. "It was amazing."
Van Damme wasn't the only big name celebrity in 'The One After The Super Bowl'.
He also had to compete against the likes of Julia Roberts and Brooke Shields.