Both Lisa Kudrow and Noah Wyle are seasoned TV veterans with hit shows currently streaming on HBO Max. Season 2 of Wyle’s award-winning medical drama The Pitt is approaching its finale, while Kudrow’s mockumentary The Comeback premiered its long-awaited Season 3 last week on the 2026 TV schedule. Long before The Comeback and The Pitt, the two knew each other as young actors at NBC, and I can’t get over the story of how the Friends star used to flirt with Wyle, and the ER actor was completely clueless.
In 1994, NBC hit the ratings jackpot with the additions of Friends and ER to the Thursday night schedule. The hit NBC shows filmed next to each other on the Warner Bros. lot, and the casts used to mingle, with Wyle and co-star George Clooney heading over to watch Friends tape after wrapping episodes of ER. Apparently, the proximity also meant Lisa Kudrow could flirt with the man who played Dr. John Carter, but Wyle told Magic Radio he was totally oblivious to it at the time:
So, I saw [Lisa] yesterday, we were having lunch. And she said to me, ‘Did I make you uncomfortable when I flirted with you in those early days when we would do those press tours?’ And I said, ‘Were you flirting?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ And I’ve been sitting with that all night long, because I never picked up on that.
It's pretty funny to think about how long this could have gone on between Kudrow and Wyle, as both of their NBC shows ran for many years. Wyle and George Clooney even guest-starred on Friends as doctors in a Season 1 episode, called “The One With Two Parts: Part Two,” which can be streamed with an HBO subscription.
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As it turns out, Kudrow also recently visited Magic Radio to say “hello hello hello” as part of her press tour for The Comeback, and she didn’t miss the chance to make a playful dig at Wyle’s sudden revelation:
Oh yeah, so, I guess it turns out he just hated me. I thought – because he’s younger, he’s a lot younger – I was like joke flirting with him, because I had a boyfriend, I’m now married to him. But [Noah] was just so adorable.
I think it's safe to say that the then 23-year-old Wyle achieved heartthrob status thanks to ER. Standing next to prime George Clooney definitely gave the Falling Skies actor more of a baby-face, but there’s no denying he was cute, and Kudrow never missed an opportunity to tell him so:
I would say, ‘You are just the cutest!’ And he would get like ‘Oh, thanks,’ and edge away. And I went, ‘Oh, I’m making him uncomfortable.’ And instead, he’s like, ‘No, I didn’t know you were flirting.’ I’m like ‘Oh, OK, so you just hated me.’ He doesn’t realize that’s what he’s just said.
That’s such a Phoebe line if I’ve ever heard one! I can totally see the character dead-panning an “Oh, OK, so you just hate me” on Friends. For his part, Wyle told Entertainment Weekly that it was very "collegiate” back in the day, that the young casts were always hanging out with each other. Many of them had other friends in common, and they were all auditioning for the same projects at the time, just before landing their individual legacy roles.
It’s funny to think what might have happened had Noah Wyle noticed Lisa Kudrow's flirtation, but it seems like everything worked out for the best, and it sure made for a hilarious reveal decades later. Now I’m hoping we get a Noah Wyle/Lisa Kudrow crossover now that they're both on in the HBO sphere. Both ER and Friends, as well as The Comeback and The Pitt, are available to binge now on HBO Max.
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