Lisa Kudrow, best known for her iconic role as Phoebe Buffay on the beloved sitcom Friends, recently opened up about a surprising aspect of her experience on the show. During the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Kudrow revealed that she often found herself irritated by the live studio audience. She said that their laughter sometimes seemed excessive to the moments that, in her opinion, didn’t require such dramatic responses.
“Because they were laughing for too long. It wasn’t that funny. That’s why," Kudrow told O’Brien. She elaborated that an extended laugh “wasn’t an honest response" and it left her irritated. “Now you’re just ruining the timing of the rest of the show. There are other lines. Sometimes I would just look out if they’d been laughing too long, and go, ‘Come on’. Really angry," she added.
Kudrow continued, emphasising that a TV show is made for the viewers at home, not for the studio audience. “That’s who we are in service to," she said. She noted that in a stage play, extended laughter is manageable as she would figure out things to keep her character busy. However, during filming, the long laugh from the audience left her awkwardly standing and nodding, “It’s terrible. They instructed our audience not to do anything like that, I think," she said.
Kudrow further pointed out that filming just a single half-hour episode of Friends often took six to eight hours. The numerous takes would eventually lead the audience to “stop laughing." This change in reaction would make the writers believe that the material was no longer effective, resulting in rewrites and additional takes.
“But it worked the first time! All I know is you’re going to take the laugh track from the first take and move it to whatever take this is. Who is suffering because they’re not laughing? I am okay if they aren’t laughing as hard. We can keep going," Kudrow said.
During the podcast, O’Brien admitted that he was “jealous" when Kudrow praised her Friends’ co-star Matthew Perry, who passed away at age of 54 in October 2023. O’Brien and Kudrow were romantically involved from 1988 to 1993. He recalled a moment when Kudrow called him up and enthusiastically praised Perry.
“You called me up, and you were raving about … " O’Brien said, as Kudrow interrupted and said, “Matthew." “Yes. And you were saying, he’s so funny … There was part of me that was jealous. Like, I was OK. I made you laugh pretty hard, and you were like, ‘No, you don’t understand. This guy’s really [funny]," he said.
Lisa Kudrow portrayed Phoebe Buffay throughout all 10 seasons of Friends, earning six Emmy nominations and securing a win for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
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