Lisa Kudrow Felt Like An Afterthought Among Friends Cast
Lisa Kudrow opened up in an interview about how she had felt overshadowed by her Friends co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, the late Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer throughout the show. She said, “Nobody cared about me, ” and admitted that her talent agency at times even called her “the sixth Friend, ” which only emphasized Slam the feelings were of a sixth player and also the down side of being treated as a last thought.
Lisa Kudrow Shares Her Career Challenges and the Moment She Discovered Her “Vision” Outside of Friends
Friends became a huge success very quickly, especially from its second season. While many of Lisa Kudrow’ castmates took advantage of the show to get parts in major films, Kudrow felt that the doors were not so much open for her. “No one had a plan for me, and no one expected that I could have a successful career, ” she recalled. She went on that some even thought, “Wow, she really lucked out getting on that show.”
That initial sense of being undervalued festered for a while, but Kudrow has achieved lasting recognition through such works as her HBO series The Comeback. In a joint interview with co-creator Michael Patrick King, King couldn’t believe that even during Friends she wasn’t getting a lot of work. And, indeed, Kudrow was the first lead cast member to be honored by the Emmy committee in 1998. More interesting roles only appeared after her debut in the 1999 comedy Analyze This, Kudrow said.
Lisa Kudrow On Early Career Offers And Her Transition To Bigger Roles
Lisa Kudrow revealed that after her role in Analyze This, agents and industry folks started coming to her with offers for romantic comedies and similar projects. On the other hand, she was skeptical about the plan and thought that she wasn’t “adorable” enough for those roles.
In fact, she landed more prominent film parts almost entirely off offers for low-budget independent films like 1997’s Clockwatchers and small supporting roles, such as in Albert Brooks’s 1996 comedy Mother. Even with the scanty opportunities, she loved working with accomplished actors like Parker Posey and Toni Collette in Clockwatchers as well as her Mother co-star and director, Albert Brooks.
Lisa Reflects on Career Success and Her Role as Phoebe on Friends
Lisa Kudrow hoped that her acing the deal would be a proof of her braininess but her team was not pleased with the way things went down. To add insult to injury, her agents would be the ones getting the most out of it financially as normally they are paid around ten percent of their clients’ earnings.
She said in an interview with Lily Tomlin for Interview Magazine that the character of Phoebe was almost the polar opposite of her and it was a big struggle to find enough reasons for her words and deeds to make sense. Nevertheless, she really enjoyed the challenge and she was getting the hang of it as the character development was happening.
Lisa Reflects on the Legacy of Phoebe and the Rebirth of “The Comeback”
It was no secret that Lisa Kudrow that playing the role of Phoebe in Friends for a decade changed her deeply. “I guess we were together for 10 years and she kind of got a bit in me. I also got some spiritual books to try to understand her, ” she stated.
Kudrow also retorted the “ditz” tag given to Phoebe by saying, “Maybe the character looked like a ‘ditz’ when it first aired in 1994, but I think differently of Phoebe now. She strikes me as a person who just didn’t ‘toe the line’.”
The mockumentary In The Comeback, Kudrow is Valerie Cherish, a B-list actress, who is giving all her strength to bring her name back to the top. After a nine year separation between its first and second seasons, the show is back for its third and final season after an even longer break, with Valerie once again facing the difficulties of rebuilding her career.
