April 6, 2026, 11:32 a.m. ET
Phoebe Buffay may need been the quirkiest Friend, however Lisa Kudrow says she wasn’t precisely a precedence.
The actress stated “nobody cared about me” regardless of her position on “Friends,” telling The Independent in an interview revealed Saturday, April 4, that she did not expertise a lift from the present professionally. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.'”
Kudrow – whereas discussing the third and remaining season of HBO’s “The Comeback,” airing 12 years after the second and 21 years after the primary – stated even with being the primary solid member to win an Emmy for the sequence in 1998, “there was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have. There was just, like, ‘Boy is she lucky she got on that show.'”
The dismissal from brokers allowed her to have extra freedom within the initiatives she went for out of doors of the behemoth of a sitcom, together with the 1996 comedy-drama “Mother,” the 1997 comedy “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” and the 1997 indie comedy-drama “Clockwatchers” with Parker Posey and Toni Collette. The 1999 comedy “Analyze This,” starring Robert De Niro, is what lastly began to show extra business heads.
“That’s when the agents and business people started circling, wanting to put me in romantic comedies and things,” she advised the outlet, her face screwing up in mock horror. “I knew that wasn’t gonna work. I’m just not adorable!”
Kudrow has change into one of many extra constantly working Friends for the reason that present’s finish in 2004, together with within the Showtime sequence “Web Therapy,” “Easy A” and “Scandal.”
“The Comeback,” one in every of her most critically acclaimed roles exterior of “Friends,” sees her play sitcom actress Valerie Cherish within the experimental satirical comedy cocreated with “Sex in the City” govt producer Michael Patrick King. And Deadline studies {that a} sequel to “Romy and Michele,” with costars Mira Sorvino and Alan Cumming, is underway.
Kudrow has expressed how taking part in Phoebe was “a lot of work,” telling Parker Posey in a Variety sit-down in 2025 that the character is a lot totally different from her. “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,” she stated.
