’80s rockstar Chrissie Hynde only appeared in one episode of Friends in the 1990s, but that one appearance changed everything for her.
“I’d never heard of [the show] but Warners were putting out an album to accompany this new show and asked me for a song, ‘Angel of the Morning,'” she said in a reader interview with The Guardian, which was published on Thursday, December 11. “Then Friends asked me if I could sit in the background in a coffee shop playing it.”
She continued, “I got to go to L.A. for a week and see my friend, but I didn’t know they’d written a whole part for me.”
Hynde played Stephanie Schiffer, the rival of Phoebe Buffay (played by Lisa Kudrow), in one 1995 episode titled “The One With the Baby on the Bus.” In the episode, Hynde was hired by the owner of Central Perk to perform for coffee shop guests. She sang “Angel of the Morning,” and Buffay’s “Smelly Cat”—a song she is credited for cowriting in real life.
Despite the small season 2 role, Hynde explained, “Then Friends was on the cover of every American magazine.”
“I thought: ‘Oh fuck, this is gonna be big,'” she added. “The cast and everybody were really nice, but I always regretted it because until then, I could take my kids to school and nobody knew who I was. Afterwards, all the kids were saying: ‘Your mom’s on Friends!'”
This story was originally published by Parade on Dec 12, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.