Anita Barone's Friends Role Lasted Just One Episode - Here's What She Did Next
Sitcom history teems with guest stars who are able to leave their mark on a whole series with a single one-off appearance. But the case of Anita Barone on "Friends" is a very peculiar one amid that pantheon.
In the early days of "Friends," when the iconic NBC series still followed a more defined plot about a group of old acquaintances reconnecting and re-entering each other's lives after years, Ross Geller's (David Schwimmer) character arc also had a very clear narrative slant. The arc in question involved Ross overcoming his recent divorce from Carol Willick, who left him at the very start of the show after realizing she was a lesbian — leading to a fraught situation when it was revealed that Carol was pregnant with Ross's child. That storyline, like many things on "Friends," has aged somewhat questionably, but Carol's importance to the show was paramount among recurring characters; she ultimately became integral to the DNA of the show and Ross's story in it. And, in her first onscreen appearance on the second-ever "Friends" episode, "The One with the Sonogram at the End," Carol was played by Anita Barone.
In every one of the 15 other appearances that Carol Willick made on "Friends," however, she was played by Jane Sibbett, who replaced Anita Barone from episode 9, "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," onward. In the end, Barone's "Friends" tenure was limited to that single early episode — but she stayed booked and busy in the following years.
Anita Barone starred on several sitcoms after Friends
According to Express, Anita Barone ultimately decided to bow out of her "Friends" role because she found it to be too minor. She followed it up with a series regular role on "The Jeff Foxworthy Show," a sitcom vehicle for the popular '90s comic, on which she played Jeff's fictional wife Karen Foxworthy. Funnily enough, that role was also recast, this time with Ann Cusack, when 'The Jeff Foxworthy Show" moved from ABC to NBC and went through a major retooling on Season 2.
Barone continued to have guest roles on various other series following her departure from "The Jeff Foxworthy Show," and, in 2000, she nabbed her second series regular part, playing working mother and attorney Linda Woods on the NBC family sitcom "Daddio," opposite Michael Chiklis. "Daddio" ultimately only aired 9 out of 18 produced episodes and was canceled after a single season, but it didn't take long for Barone to score her third series regular role, once again playing the mother on a family sitcom. The sitcom in question was Fox's "The War at Home," which premiered in 2005 and turned out to be a more successful outing for Barone, running for two seasons and featuring her on every one of its 44 total episodes.
Between 2010 and 2013, Barone also had a recurring role as Georgia Jones, the mother of CeCe (Bella Thorne) and Flynn Jones (Davis Cleveland), on the popular Disney Channel dance-themed sitcom "Shake It Up."