Lisa Kudrow may have been part of one of television’s biggest hits, but she says her career never followed the same trajectory as her co-stars from Friends.
Despite the show’s massive success, Kudrow admitted she often felt overlooked in Hollywood. “Nobody cared about me,” she told the Independent in a recent interview, recalling how some within her own agency referred to her as “the sixth Friend.”
“You’re not related, you live far away,” Rachel once told Phoebe Buffay in a fit of pique. “You lift right out!” Although Kudrow did win an Emmy during her time on Friends, Lisa suggested there was little expectation for her career in Hollywood beyond the sitcom and had always been “the other” in later roles as well.
“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’”.
While her co-stars quickly moved into high-profile roles, Kudrow found herself gravitating toward characters that were unconventional or secondary—often playing outsiders rather than leading, high impact figures.
She added at another point, “I was the odd one out. I thought… maybe? I mean, it’s a good show, but I don’t know about that. But I’m just that kind of person”.
That pattern of lesser-seen performances continued even after Friends ended in 2004. Her HBO series The Comeback, now in its third and final season, touched upon that very idea, centering on a fading actress desperate to stay relevant in an industry that sidelines her.
Kudrow’s longtime collaborator Michael Patrick King noted that many of her roles reflect characters who are “not chosen”.
“Look at how many magnificent, not-chosen characters Lisa has played,” he said. “Or don’t-look-at-me characters. It’s really special. And it’s what’s so thrilling about Valerie – we’re taking the outsider and making her the main character. She’s a character so outside that you can’t look away.”
Valerie was first introduced in 2005, a year after Friends went off the air. In The Comeback’s first season, she agreed to film a reality show all about her return to television.
“People were watching it covering their eyes. They’d say ‘it’s so cringe’. But really it’s so human. It taps into all of our worst fears,” she said of the mixed reactions the show bagged back in 2005. The Comeback was cancelled after its first season, but a second season later arrived in 2014.
“We had to just surrender to that decision,” Kudrow says now of the hiatus. “We weren’t going to knock on doors begging them to bring it back,” King added.
And now, The Comeback has returned with a third season 12 years later for a final run.
“Luckily, unlike Valerie, we don’t have to worry about our rent,” King said, “so we don’t have to make the show unless there’s something we really want to say”.
