Action star Jean-Claude Van Damme said his one-episode cameo on the hit NBC comedy “Friends” was “strange” and that he was “ashamed” of himself for it.
The 63-year-old actor played himself in the 1996 episode “The One After the Super Bowl: Part 2.” In the storyline, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox) both showed interest in the star and fought over who would get the chance to date him.
Van Damme, a renowned martial artist, said he wasn’t thrilled with his acting prowess in that episode, which aired during season 2, as “Friends” was starting to get popular.
“My acting is so bad. I look so like a ham. Like, ‘Hey, girls.’ … It’s like, I’m ashamed of myself,” Van Damme told The New York Post of the experience. “So then I was on the set, and those girls [Aniston and Cox], 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.”
“I didn’t know much about the show,” Van Damme added. “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. And my agent said, ‘You have to do an episode with them. So you’re going to play this guy.’”
He did a reenactment of how he had to stand while playing the part, the Post noted. “Oh, but this was [how I looked] against the wall,” the actor explained. “So I was like this on ‘Friends’: ‘Hey, girls. What’s up?’”
Despite the awkwardness, Van Damme said the whole experience overall was “a good memory.”
“They 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,” Van Damme said. “It was amazing.”
The Belgian star also joked that “Friends” is more popular than his own Hollywood contributions. “Everybody talk about that show more than all of my movies together,” Van Damme said.
