Lisa Kudrow says “nobody cared” about her as Phoebe Buffay on Friends.
The iconic sitcom actor says she suffered from being the so-called sixth friend after the the New York City-based show, which ran from 1994 to 2004, exploded in popularity.
“Nobody cared about me,” she said in an interview with The Independent, adding, “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.’”
Despite being a key part of one of the most successful shows of all time and winning an Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series in 1998, she said, “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.’”
Friends ran for 10 seasons, and also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry.
Kudrow, who just launched the final season of her HBO mockumentary series The Comeback, told Interview magazine in March that she didn’t see Phoebe in the same way she has often been treated.
“At the time, it was like, ‘She’s such a ditz,’” she said. ‘How is it that you only play ditzes?’ And I thought, Is she a ditz? To me, she wasn’t.”
She added, “In 1994, it was like, ‘I love her. She’s such a ditz.’ And it’s like, yeah, OK, that was what a ditz was to us. Someone who wasn’t toeing the line… But she wasn’t stupid.”
Kudrow, 62, previously told Interview how different she is from Phoebe in real life.
“At first, Phoebe was very, very far from me,” she said. “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.”
Despite her close association with Phoebe, she told the Daily Beast’s Obsessed: The Podcast that the character she really resonates with is The Comeback’s Valerie Cherish.
“I’m sure the line got blurred for me, being Valerie,” she said.
