15 amazing Friends facts we learned from Lisa Kudrow’s Reddit AMA
The actress reveals her favourite episode, who really came up with the tunes for those Phoebe Buffay songs and whether she’d prefer to do a movie or another full series
Yesterday Lisa Kudrow took to Reddit to answer questions from fans in an Ask Me Anything event. The actress was promoting the next instalment of The Comeback on HBO but, of course, fans wanted to ask about Friends. Friends, Friends, Friends.
Luckily, the actress was more than happy to discuss her time playing guitar-loving Phoebe Buffay. Here’s what we learned….
Her guitar playing hasn’t improved…
“Haven’t picked it up since we finished the show.”
Lisa actually composed the Smelly Cat tune:
“The writers wrote it, I wrote the tune, and had a little help from Chryssie [sic] Hynde. She was amazing.” Lisa later adds, “Phoebe’s song lyrics were not ad libbed. Because I play the guitar so poorly, it would be too hard to learn how to play that badly.”
David Schwimmer did genuinely make her laugh on set, most memorably when he played the bagpipes:
“Ross played ‘Celebrate’, the Kool and the Gang song, on bagpipes! And he was SO fully committed!"
Of all the episodes, Lisa says one remains her favourite:
“The Halloween party that Sean Penn appeared in. For a lot of reasons. Number one was it was the first show we shot after 9/11. And that whole week, while driving in LA, people would pull up and give me a very sad look and a quiet ‘thank you’ for making them laugh.”
The actress can’t choose between twin sisters Ursula and Phoebe
“They were both fun for completely different reasons.”
Lisa won’t sing Smelly Cat, no matter how many times she's asked:
“I have a LOT of people ask. I’ve not done it.”
Lisa never found out what they were feeding Smelly Cat"
“Ha ha! No, good question!”
Does Lisa wish Friends lasted longer?
“I loved doing Friends. I would have been fine if we did it 10 more years, and it was great that we finished when we did, because I’ve loved everything I’ve done since.”
Lisa has a pretty clear idea of what Phoebe and Mike would be doing in 2014:
“Oh yeah! I honestly think Phoebe would be a super-competitive tiger mom. She doesn’t do anything by half-measure.”
If there was a reunion of the Friends cast, Lisa would rather do a Friends season than a movie or one-off episode:
“A whole season, because to spend that much time with those people again would be heaven!”
Of all Phoebe’s songs, Lisa knows her favourite:
“They all actually made me laugh really hard. Somebody put them all together on YouTube because I’d forgotten all the songs and every time a new one came on I laughed out loud. But I really liked the one for the kids, that started, “Oh the cow in the meadow goes moo…”
And her favourite Friends series was...
“I think 1. Because it was the first one.”
Lisa still gets awkward fan meets:
“It’s only awkward when someone says 'Phoebe'… and then adds, 'Because I don’t know your real name.' And THEN says, 'I actually haven’t seen the show but my friends say I should say that to you.' And THEN asks for a picture.”
Lisa admits she doesn’t really watch re-runs of Friends:
“I rarely watch re-runs. And I should watch them, because I never remember what the show was about. And so when we DO get together, shows do come up, we do reminisce about fun and funny things that happened.”
And this is what was going through Lisa’s head when they walked through Monica’s door in the final ever scene:
“One thought really: This is too much.”
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