All posts tagged: Lisa Kudrow

Friends star Lisa Kudrow shares ‘brutal’ experience on set: ‘There was mean stuff going on behind the scenes’

Friends star Lisa Kudrow shares ‘brutal’ experience on set: ‘There was mean stuff going on behind the scenes’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Friends star Lisa Kudrow has shared the darker side of her time on the hit sitcom, revealing that the female cast faced “intense” scrutiny from its mostly male writers’ room. Kudrow, 62, is best known for starring as free spirit Phoebe Buffet in all 10 seasons of the comedy, which has become one of the highest-grossing TV shows of all time since it first aired in 1994. Over twenty years on from Friends’ finale, Kudrow admitted in a new interview that there was “mean stuff going on behind the scenes” in the writers’ room, which was mostly men and made up of 12 to 15 staff members. David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc on ‘Friends’ (NBC) “Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up …

Lisa Kudrow Reveals Why She Cast Her Son on The Comeback Final Season

Lisa Kudrow Reveals Why She Cast Her Son on The Comeback Final Season

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Comeback dropped episode four of its final season Sunday night, and the new installment finds Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish settling in on the soundstage of How’s That?!, and attempting to smooth things over as the AI-written sitcom encounters hiccups in the early days of production. At the table read for the show’s second episode, Cherish is perplexed by a jail scene and annoyed that some of her co-stars don’t have more lines. As she investigates the situation, Cherish, who is an executive producer of her new show, seeks out the AI assistant, Marco, who introduces her to a new character, a “troubleshoot tech guy” named Evan. He explains that the unusual scene is actually a “hallucination” that AI spit out because it got stuck between the prompt and AI’s knowledge base. Cherish seems relieved as she takes in the information while being surprised by how spooked Evan acts as two burly crew members walk past him. Evan explains that he was body-checked by some crew members while working on his last AI project. “This …

Lisa Kudrow Changes Her Mind About Controversial Friends Storyline

Lisa Kudrow Changes Her Mind About Controversial Friends Storyline

Published by Sam Flores

You can judge the cultural impact of a TV series by how much it crosses the threshold into everyday life. In the case of Friends, the show came to define everything from haircuts (“The Rachel”) to romantic idealism (finding “your lobster”) at the peak of its popularity. And, of course, it also inspired one of the longest-running TV debates – whether or not Ross and Rachel really were “on a break”. One of the key plot points of the iconic 90s sitcom was an argument about whether or not David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston’s on-off characters were “on a break” when Ross slept with another woman (Chloe – “the hot girl from the Xerox place”), leading to an explosive row. The incident was the tipping point in a storyline that saw Ross grow increasingly jealous of Rachel’s work colleague Mark, as she clocked in hours trying to climb the ladder in her dream fashion job. In recent years, thanks in part to Friends finding a home on streaming platforms Netflix and, more recently, HBO Max, …

The Comeback’s Traitors Scene Was Inspired By Linda’s Ill-Fated Stint

The Comeback’s Traitors Scene Was Inspired By Linda’s Ill-Fated Stint

Published by Sam Flores

This article contains spoilers for the latest season of The Comeback. It turns out Lisa Kudrow found inspiration in some unlikely places while putting together the third and final season of her Emmy-nominated comedy The Comeback. While promoting the latest iteration of The Comeback, Lisa previously disclosed that one episode would see her character taking part in a fictitious series of The Traitors US, alongside RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Trixie Mattel. During the latest episode, this scene finally aired, with Valerie struggling every bit as much to hide the fact she was a Traitor as you might expect. However, during an interview on Traitors UK host Claudia Winkleman’s talk show before this episode aired, Lisa disclosed that watching Linda on the infamous third season of the British reality show had given her the idea for how Valerie’s stint in the castle would pan out. “Linda was the person who, when I said, ‘Traitors you’ll meet each other later’, looked at me and nodded,” Claudia reminded viewers, before asking Lisa: “There was a bit of Linda …

Lisa Kudrow Says Actresses are Afraid They Inspired Valerie Cherish

Lisa Kudrow Says Actresses are Afraid They Inspired Valerie Cherish

Published by Daniella Wilson

Valerie Cherish is back for one more go-around. The Lisa Kudrow character, a veteran sitcom actress trying to survive Hollywood in endlessly cringey ways, returns for a third and final season of The Comeback — this time following Valerie as she stars in the first multicam written by AI. Kudrow introduced the character with the show’s first season in 2005, then revived Valerie for the second season in 2014, when she (and her iconic catchphrases) truly became a pop culture phenomenon. Though the show serves largely as a satire of entertainment industry and those who operate within it, there is some truth to it all, as Kudrow saw in Hollywood’s reception of Valerie. “In the beginning, I would go to things and actresses would come up to me — known actresses that I admired a lot — and just sort of lean in and say, ‘I’m so afraid that’s me,’” Kudrow told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere on Thursday. “I said, ‘No, of course that’s not you.’ But that’s how much Valerie …

Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King Think Everyone Is Valerie Cherish Now

Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King Think Everyone Is Valerie Cherish Now

Published by Sam Flores

In 2017, you lost Robert Michael Morris, who plays Valerie’s beloved hairstylist, Mickey. His spirit is deeply felt on the third season of the show. How did you both navigate that? It must have been really emotional. Kudrow: It was. I was worried about not having Mickey. How does this work without Mickey? It also kept me away from it for a while. When we would talk about, ‘What could it be?’ I’m like, ‘There’s no Mickey. I don’t know.’ Yeah, it was too hard, honestly. King: He was my college theater teacher. We created this part for a very retired performer to come back and do it. This is the most Mickey thing of all: When he died, I think it was Entertainment Weekly said, “Television star Robert Michael Morris dead.” And I just thought him seeing that in the trades, “Television star”…would almost be worth him leaving. I think he would enjoy that. What is it about Valerie that keeps us rooting for her, even through all of the flubs and the mistakes? …

Lisa Kudrow Names Friends Season 8 Scene That Had Her Crying With Laughter

Lisa Kudrow Names Friends Season 8 Scene That Had Her Crying With Laughter

Published by Sam Flores

Lisa Kudrow has revealed that her Friends watch is still going strong. During an appearance on Wednesday’s edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Emmy winner shared that she’s not long finished the hit comedy’s eighth season, admitting she has to “wait until my husband goes to sleep, because I’m too embarrassed” to watch herself on screen with him there. “I’m not watching it for myself,” she quickly insisted. “I just like a sitcom before bed.” Revealing how the classic show has her “laughing out loud” as she revisits the old episodes, Lisa recalled: “It was last night or the night before, Alec Baldwin was in the episode. We’re at the Gellars’ anniversary party, and Joey and Phoebe are talking, and Joey says ‘this is the worst party… it took forever to get to the buffet, and I get up there, and I almost slipped on a giant booger!’, and Phoebe had thrown an oyster on the floor. “And just the thought that Joey thought an oyster was a booger that came out of someone’s nose …

Friends’ Lisa Kudrow Begs Next Warners Owner to Preserve Studio Lot

Friends’ Lisa Kudrow Begs Next Warners Owner to Preserve Studio Lot

Published by Daniella Wilson

Lisa Kudrow has one big request for whoever is the next owner of Warner Bros. Discovery. During a recent interview with Architectural Digest, the Friends alum asked that the iconic studio lot in Burbank, California, where she filmed the beloved sitcom, be “preserved as is.” “It’s hard for me to tell whether Warner Bros. is just special to me, or if it’s special to the whole city or industry, and I think it is,” she said. “Everything changes ownership all the time and you don’t know what’s going to happen.” Kudrow continued, “I think most people really really hope whatever happens next is that this studio lot is preserved as is. It works. I mean, we just shot here. Whoever buys it, you don’t need to change anything! It works. It works great! It really does. So congratulations, whoever’s next, please don’t change a thing. Please, please don’t remove Jack Warner’s roses.” The No Good Deed star named Warner Bros. — which is known as the filming spot for dozens of legendary projects, including Casablanca, Inception, …