Lisa Kudrow remains on friendly terms with her Friends co-stars, 22 years after the sitcom wrapped, but in a new interview, the actor admits that she always felt somewhat excluded from the starry group.
Speaking to The Independent, Kudrow—who played the hilarious, quirky Phoebe Buffay—said she was treated like the least important cast member, compared to Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller).
“Nobody cared about me,” she said. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth friend.’”
While Kudrow was the first cast member to win an Emmy for her performance in the cult-classic show (in 1998, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series), she said she didn’t get as much of an immediate professional boost as her co-stars once the series came out.
CBS Photo Archive//Getty Images
Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry join James Corden for a Friends Reunion Special on April 7, 2021.
“There was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have,” she said. “There was just, like, ‘boy is she lucky she got on that show.’’”
Of course, Kudrow did land Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion in 1997, and later starred in many films: Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002) with Robert De Niro, Booksmart (2019), Lucky Number, (2000), Hanging Up (2000), Easy A (2010), and The Girl on the Train (2016), to name a few. Currently, she is promoting the third season of her acclaimed HBO series The Comeback.
Recalling her first film with De Niro, Analyze This, about a mob boss in therapy, Kudrow told The Independent, “and that’s when the agents and business people started circling, wanting to put me in romantic comedies and things.” She added, “I knew that wasn’t gonna work. I’m just not adorable!” (We strongly disagree!)
Kudrow has previously spoken about feeling out of place next to her female Friends co-stars, Aniston and Cox.
“I thought I was just really skinny. I can do whatever, [but] no, especially in high school. And I look at pictures and say, ‘Wow, pictures really distort reality,’” she said on the Podcrushed podcast in 2022. “And it wasn’t until Friends that I realized, ‘Oh, I don’t look like I thought I looked.’” She added, “It was just seeing myself on the show and seeing myself in clothes and seeing Courteney and Jennifer in clothes.”
We love you, Lisa!