Actress Jane Sibbett is famous for playing Ross's ex-wife Carol on Friends, but not everyone was a fan of her in the role.
Early in the show, Ross (David Schwimmer) and his ex-wife Carol are co-parenting while Carol, who came out as a lesbian when she divorced Ross, is in a relationship with her partner Susan.
In season 2, Carol and Susan announced that they were getting married, and their wedding ended up being the first lesbian wedding in a mainstream TV show.
It was a groundbreaking episode of queer TV, but not everyone in Sibbett's life was happy about her starring in the role. She recently told The Sun that she faced homophobia for playing a lesbian character.
"I would say there was 95 percent support but once I had flown to Canada to shoot a Disney movie and a child was yelling at me out of a school window," she revealed. "He was shouting, 'Go home, American f*g' and I just went, 'Wow, wrong on so many levels dude. Come down here and have a conversation with me.'"
"Then I had a woman from my old church call me up… and proceeded to tell me that I was going to burn in hell," she added.
"It caused stress in my own family," Sibbett continued. "We had a big situation with my father who wouldn’t watch the show. Thankfully he came around to it in the end."
"It was heartbreaking that he wouldn't watch it. He would hold a bible study group at the time it aired to ensure his friends wouldn’t see it either," she said. "It took my godfather writing a letter to him saying how proud he was of me for the wedding scene that cracked it for my father."
"He thought, 'Wait, I’m not going to be judged for this and it can help people.' It was great for that wound to be healed before my dad passed," she said.
