‘It Changed Everything’ — Brooke Shields Reveals the Classic Sitcom Moment That Led to ‘Suddenly Susan’

Brooke Shields‘ career has spanned the decades, taking her from child model and movie star to sitcom star. Shields’ turn as the star of Suddenly Susan, the NBC comedy that ran from 1996 to 2000, may never have happened if it wasn’t for her memorable appearance on another NBC classic that featured a move that was completely Shields’ idea.

Brooke Shields’ Friends Stint Changed Her Life

In a special Friends episode that aired right after the 1996 Super Bowl, aptly titled “The One After the Super Bowl,” Shields appeared with multiple celebrities making guest-star turns on the show. Shields’ character, Erika Ford, was obsessed with Drake Ramoray, the character who Joey Tribiani (Matt LeBlanc) played on a fictional version of Days of our Lives. Shields’ crazed soap fan character is sure that Joey really is Drake and fawns all over him, going so far as to lick his fingers at dinner.

“And, at first, they didn’t let me do it, and they said it makes me too crazy,” Shields recently said on an episode of the podcast The Bossticks. “And I said, ‘I have to do it, please.’ At the last minute — we did one pass without it — and then the showrunner said, ‘Hey, Shields, put it back in.”

As Shields told it, the rest was history. She was able to show Hollywood just how funny and creative she was after years of being seen as just another pretty face.

“That sort of shock of seeing someone that had been sort of considered a supermodel kind of a thing and pristine and untouchable and, all of a sudden, she’s licking a guy’s fingers, she’s laughing like a crazy person,” Shields, whose earlier credits included Endless Love and Blue Lagoon, per IMDb, said. “And it just changed everything. It got me my own television show, and it allowed me to really kind of delve in with comedy chops.”

That one iconic appearance helped give birth to Suddenly Susan and revitalize Shields’ long and successful career, leading to two Golden Globe nominations. Shields’ most recent episodic TV appearance was on Hallmark’s When Calls The Heart in March of 2026. Shields originally appeared on the drama back in 2016.