23. Our Friend Wasn’t Faking It
Usually, when we see pregnant television characters, they’re wearing a prosthetic belly, but when Lisa Kudrow had a bun in the oven, Friends writers incorporated her pregnancy into the show, giving us Phoebe’s awkwardly hilarious storyline where she plays surrogate for her brother and his teacher-wife. That was Kudrow’s real baby belly (with a little padding) until season 5.
Series co-creator David Crane told Emmy’s, “When we heard Lisa was pregnant, we thought, ‘Well, that will be fun’ and opened up a great storyline. Phoebe is a strong comic character, so it became important for us to create storylines with substance and huge emotional stakes. The minute the surrogate idea was floated, we all got excited about it.”