Lauren Tom has revealed she was booed during Friends tapings – but she is not the only actor to come up against unexpected and explosive fan fury

In these days of unrestrained online rage, registering one’s disapproval of a fictional character with a real-life, real-time heckle seems almost quaint. In season two of Friends, Lauren Tom played Julie, the nice palaeontologist girlfriend of Ross. Tom recently revealed that her character was so unpopular among fans of the show clinging to their Ross/Rachel agenda that they would boo her during the tapings. “I wasn’t prepared for the amount of venom I was about to receive in a live audience where they actually booed my character,” she told the NBC show Today. But TV history is littered with (mostly female) accidental villains who inspired disproportionate fan fury.

Skyler White, Breaking Bad

Anna Gunn was so appalled by the loathing fans held for Skyler that she wrote a sharp defence of her for the New York Times. “My character, to judge from the popularity of websites and Facebook pages devoted to hating her, has become a flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated women,” she said. It’s still possible to argue that Breaking Bad’s female characters were underwritten, but Gunn’s articulate disgust at the vitriol Skyler inspired was wonderful and necessary.

Dawn Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Season five introduced a surprise little sister for the Slayer, upsetting fans who had not yet picked up on season four’s heavy hints. Dawn was whiny, entitled and ruined every quiet night in, but Michelle Trachtenberg, who played her, argued that her more irritating qualities were true to the teenage experience. “It used to be a 60-40 ‘I hate Dawn’. Then it became 50-50. Now, I think it’s 60-40 being supportive of Dawn. Maybe even 70-30,” she told EW in 2017.

Lord Grantham, Downton Abbey

Hugh Bonneville received threats after his Downton character ignored the advice of a doctor, resulting in the death of his daughter Lady Sybil. “I’ve had hate mail and bomb threats, because I’m obviously the most evil person on the planet for favouring one piece of medical advice over another,” Bonneville said, although he somehow failed to call in the dowager countess to sort it all out.

Jess Mariano, Gilmore Girls

Luke’s brooding nephew arrived in Stars Hollow with a bad-boy, won’t-do attitude and a literary bro armoury of Beat Generation references. Milo Ventimiglia said that his first fan interaction involved a Gilmore Girls viewer telling him she “hated” him at the gym, but at least Jess showed Dean up for the possessive creep that he was, so he wasn’t all bad.

Betty Draper, Mad Men

January Jones said that once Betty had left Don, Mad Men fans turned against her, even berating her for sleeping with other male characters. “[Fans] were mean to me on the street,” the actor recalled. Oddly, and in contrast to most critics, she felt that Betty’s fat suit era, written to disguise Jones’s pregnancy, made people warm to her again, rather than leaving them wondering if the showrunner, Matt Weiner, had truly lost the plot.