With Friends turning 30 years old in 2024, the always excellent Lisa Kudrow and her famed co-stars have reflected quite a bit on heading up one of the biggest TV shows of all time. Though for all the mega-success and pleasure that the Must See TV sitcom delivered, it wasn’t always the easiest fit for Kudrow as an actor, since playing a ditzy character doesn’t come so naturally to non-ditzy people.
Kudrow has shared previously that other jobs since Friends have paled in comparison to having “won the lottery” with her five co-stars, but she sometimes struggled with playing a character who exists on such a different and kooky wavelength. Speaking with White Lotus Season 3 standout Parker Posey for Variety, Kudrow was asked if the sitcom process felt akin to a sport at the time, and the actress addressed that despite all the positives, getting into Phoebe’s headspace presented the biggest challenge. In her words:
It became fun. It was fun the whole time because the cast had fun. Phoebe was so far from who I was as a human being, it was work — I needed to justify everything she was saying in my head so that it felt like she meant it and it was real to her. It was a lot of work.
That take is totally understandable, since there are so many shows out there that feature quirky Phoebe-esque characters who feel far more like cartoonish caricatures than real people. So it's a testament to Kudrow's talents that she was able to ground her performance in a way that made it easy to understand why she'd be a constant presence in everyone else's lives. (Except for twin sister Ursula, of course, but that's a different convo.)
Kudrow talked about a point in the early seasons when she struggled over thinking she wasn't doing enough in the role, which sparked a sweet reaction from co-star Matt LeBlanc:
I remember Season 2 or 3, I went, ‘Oh my God, I’m not doing the work.’ And LeBlanc went, ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re her. You don’t have to.’
Now, for the most part, one can assume that LeBlanc's intentions were completely genuine and kind-hearted. And that he only meant to imply that Lisa Kudrow was such a natural talent that she embodied any role she took on, as opposed to him saying, "You're naturally a nutty woman."
But even if that was the point, Kudrow still felt there was something slightly off, in that she felt like she needed to put more of a measurable effort in, which is what ended up hurting her the most during Friends' run. As she put it:
The worst thing was wanting to be a good student. That’s what hurt me the most.
We often do hold ourselves to the highest standards, even when others don't, so it's good to know that Lisa Kudrow was able to settle into portraying Phoebe with more ease as time went on, allowing for the day when her character would get married to Paul Rudd, er, to Crap Bag, er, to Mike.
Lisa Kudrow went on to play characters who were surprisingly even more uncomfortable than Phoebe, from The Comeback's Valerie Cherish to No Good Deed's Lydia Morgan, and hasn't ever seemed like she was struggling, so hopefully all of those feelings were shed and forgotten a long time ago.
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