It’s no secret that the Friends cast members were practically family to one another in real life, but Lisa Kudrow credits one co-star in particular for helping her during some tough filming days.
The Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion star was speaking on Sirius XM’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast when she opened up about struggling to settle into her character as Phoebe Buffay in the early days of the beloved sitcom.
Speaking to co-host Ted Danson, Lisa admitted that it took her “if not a year and a half, maybe two seasons, before I felt like I had Phoebe down”.
“The things she said were so outrageously illogical that in order for me to justify them, I felt like ‘Oof!’” she explained. “It just took a lot of work to figure out, ‘All right, how is it possible that I think this is true or a good idea or a reasonable thing to say’?”
While she recalled having previously put in the “acting work” to get her character right, something began to feel off around season two or three.
“I’m like, ‘Something’s wrong,’ ’cause I’m not doing the work I was doing,” she said.
“I’m slacking off. I’m being lazy and I was getting really mad at myself, and [Matt] LeBlanc came. He said, ‘What’s going on with you?’ I said, ‘I’m being lazy. I’m not doing the work that I did first season, second season. I’m not doing the work I did for Phoebe, so it can’t be good.’”
Her co-star, who played Joey Tribbiani on the hit show, reassure her in response: “No, you know who the character is now. You don’t need to do the work you did. You got it.”
Lisa added that, with Matt’s encouragement, she was finally able to feel “relaxed”.
“That was enough,” she went on. “It’s sort of like someone shook me ’cause I was getting hysterical. I wasn’t literally getting hysterical, but you know like if you’re getting hysterical, someone slaps you back. You’re like, ‘Oh, thanks. That’s what I needed.’”
During a recent interview with Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend Lisa explained how she previously struggled to watch herself in Friends when it was on TV, but was able to start watching again after her co-star Matthew Perry’s death “because it wasn’t about me”.