When Agassi smashed his trophies in a jealous rage over Brooke Shields’ scene in ‘Friends’

American actress Brooke Shields continues to make headlines as she promotes her autobiographical documentary Pretty Baby, which will be released on Hulu on April 3. The latest story is about her stormy relationship with tennis star Andre Agassi, who allegedly burst into a jealous rage after watching Shields’ cameo on the hit TV show Friends.

In the 1996 Friends episode called “The One After the Superbowl, Part 1,” Brookes plays Erika, a fan obsessed with Matt Le Blanc’s character Joey Tribbiani, who is an actor on Days of Our Lives. Erika is so obsessed with Tribbiani that in one legendary scene, she grabs his hand and licks his fingers. In an interview with The New Yorker, Shields says that Agassi, her then-boyfriend, was on set for the shoot but stormed out during the scene.

“He said, ‘Everybody’s making fun of me. You made a fool of me by that behavior.’ I’m, like, ‘It’s comedy! What is the matter with you?’” Shields said. “I learned later that he was addicted to crystal meth at that point, so that irrational behavior I’m sure had something to do with that.” Agassi wrote about his crystal meth use in his 2009 autobiography Open.

According to Shields, Agassi was so angry about the scene that he went home and “smashed all his trophies” in rage.

“What was so affirming about it was that, in the first take, they didn’t want me to do the crazy laugh and the licking of his fingers,” she continued. “We had done it in rehearsal, and they said, ‘It’s too crazy. Don’t do it,’” she added. “And I begged for it. ‘It’s so funny. It just makes her [Erika] crazier. And she’s pretty, so she needs to really be crazy.’ And they were, like, ‘No, no.’ We did the first take, and it was fine. And then the second take, they scream, ‘Shields! Put it back in!’ All of a sudden, the energy changed, and all these men in suits started coming into the studio. The next day, I was asked if I wanted to do my own television show.” Shields would later go on to star in the sitcom Suddenly Susan.

This is not the first time that Shields has opened up about her relationship with Agassi. The couple began dating in 1993 and married in April 1997. But in January 1999, the two divorced. In her 2014 memoir, There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me, Shields says that she knew early on their marriage was doomed. “It hit me all of a sudden: I knew I had made a mistake,” she writes, adding that she began to have panic attacks as soon as the honeymoon began.

The two spent lots of time apart due to work and Agassi’s addiction to meth — which he confessed began in 1993, the same year they started dating — further strained the relationship. “For the next two years, we saw very little of each other. I was working on my show, Suddenly Susan, and he was playing at various tournaments,” Shields wrote in her memoir. “He alienated me when he lost and was on to the next tournament after he won. We were drifting apart.”

Although Shields was the one to file for divorce, she says it was not an easy decision. “This was the first time in my life that I said: ‘I don’t want to live like this, this doesn’t make me happy. He’s a great person, but I’m leaving,’” she told EL PAÍS in June 2022.

After the divorce, Agassi married fellow tennis player Steffi Graf, while Shields married screenwriter Chris Henchy. Both couples are still together.

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