Lisa Kudrow bluntly acknowledged she’s not the most popular character on “Friends.”
The actress spoke out about her iconic character, Phoebe Buffay, in the hit sitcom, which also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry.
“Nobody cared about me,” she said in an interview with the Independent published Saturday. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.’”
Even though Kudrow won an Emmy in 1998 in the best supporting actress in a comedy series category for her performance as the lovably goofy Phoebe, she said many did not believe she would have longevity in Hollywood.
“There was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have,” she recalled. “There was just, like, ‘boy is she lucky she got on that show.’”
“Friends” aired for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004. She also reflected on playing the beloved character in a recent Q&A with Lily Tomlin for Interview magazine — noting how different she is from Phoebe in real life.
“At first, Phoebe was very, very far from me,” she shared. “It took a lot of work to justify the things she would say and do. Not in an irritating way — it was fun.”
“Over the course of 10 years, a little bit of her came into me,” she continued, “I lightened up a little more and read some books on spirituality and things, just to try to understand her.”
Kudrow insisted Phoebe was not a “ditzy” character, which some people perceived her as.
“At the time, it was like, “She’s such a ditz. How is it that you only play ditzes?” And I thought, Is she a ditz? To me, she wasn’t.” she said.
“In 1994, it was like, “I love her. She’s such a ditz.” And it’s like, yeah, okay, that was what a ditz was to us. Someone who wasn’t towing the line.”
Kudrow, 62, has been promoting the third and final season of “The Comeback,” and she recently got real about aging in Hollywood.
The actress told the Hollywood Reporter she didn’t try Botox until she was 60, but she was “probably done with it.”
“I am scared of having to see myself looking like my grandmother one day, but I’m excited to play older roles,” she explained.
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