Brooke Shields Reveals How ‘Friends’ Cameo Enraged Ex Andre Agassi

Brooke Shields‘ famous appearance on a special post-Super Bowl Friends episode resulted in far more than just her nabbing her own NBC sitcom. Her soon-to-be-husband Andre Agassi smashed his trophies after viewing a scene in which she licked Matt LeBlanc’s fingers. Agassi mentioned this story in his 2009 memoir, while Shields mentioned it in her 2014 memoir.

In a new interview with The New Yorker, Shields was asked about her successful reinvention in the 1990s. After she starred in “The One After the Superbowl,” which aired after Super Bowl XXX in 1996, Shields went on to star in her own NBC sitcom, Suddenly Susan. In the Friends episode, she played Joey’s stalker, who believes Joey is actually his Days of Our Lives character. The two go on a date, during which Joey allows Shields’ character to lick his fingers and hand.

Shields was dating Agassi at the time, and he was in the studio audience to support her. When they filmed that scene, the tennis great stormed out of the studio, Shields recalled. “He said, ‘Everybody’s making fun of me. You made a fool of me by that behavior,’” Shields told The New Yorker. “I’m, like, ‘It’s comedy! What is the matter with you?’ 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.”

Shields still could not believe Agassi smashed his trophies over the scene. “Who wins for that? That’s just-don’t,” she said.

Agassi wrote about the incident in his 2009 memoir Open. He admitted he didn’t want to go to the taping at first, but since Shields had supported him during tennis matches, he thought he should support her. “Of course, I’ve watched Brooke kiss men onstage before,” he wrote, via USA Today. “This is different. This is over the line. I don’t pretend to know where the line is, but hand licking is definitely over it.”

Agassi later called up Shields, still tense from that moment. After hanging up, he broke his trophies. “[An] hour later I open my eyes. I survey the damage as if someone else is responsible – and it’s true. It was someone else. The someone who does half the [expletive] I do,” he wrote.

Shields also wrote about this in her 2014 memoir There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me, notes the Los Angeles Times. Agassi told the model she “made him look like a fool,” Shields recalled. He then drove to his home in Las Vegas. “Upon arrival he systematically smashed and destroyed every single trophy he had won, including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, never mind all the others,” Shields wrote.

Shields and Agassi started dating in 1993 and married in 1997. They divorced in 1999. She has been married to writer Chris Henchy since 2001 and they are parents to two daughters, Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16. She is the subject of Hulu’s Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, which will be released on April 3.