Lisa Kudrow on Watching ‘Friends’ After Matthew Perry’s Death, ‘Romy & Michele’ Sequel and Why ‘The Comeback’ May Be “Highlight” of Her Career

Lisa Kudrow is one of the most beloved TV actresses of the past 40 years. She is, of course, best known for playing, from 1994 through 2004, Phoebe Buffay, a New Age guitar-playing masseuse, on NBC’s Friends , which the New York Times has suggested “might be the best-liked sitcom ever,” and for which, in 1998, she became the first of the show’s core sextet to win an Emmy. But she has also done extensive and acclaimed work outside of that show, perhaps more so than any of her Friends costars.

Indeed, Kudrow was also memorable before Friends — and even for a while overlapping with it — on another staple of NBC’s ‘Must-See TV’ era, Mad About You . During the run of Friends , she was part of a range of well-received films, from big studio projects like 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and 1999’s Analyze This to low-budget indies such as 1997’s Clockwatchers and 1998’s The Opposite of Sex . And since the end of Friends , she has done perhaps her best work yet as a co-creator (with Michael Patrick King ), writer, executive producer and star of the HBO comedy series The Comeback , a show about Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom actress who is desperate to remain relevant. Related Stories TV Workplace Comedies Are Having a Major Emmy Moment Movies Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino Bring 'Romy and Michele 2' to D23: "We're Officially Disney Princesses"

Kudrow’s work on The Comeback — which dropped its three seasons in 2005, 2014 and 2026, respectively — has been described by the New Yorker as her “finest creation”; by the New York Times as “a character for the ages” and “a brilliant performance”; by the Independent as “one of TV’s greatest ever performances”; by Vulture as “an all-time television performance”; and by NPR as “perhaps the greatest comedic character study of the 21st century.” It brought her best actress in a comedy series Emmy nominations for the show’s first two seasons, and now, for its third, she is Emmy-nominated for both best actress in a comedy series and , with King, for best writing for a comedy series. (This year’s noms bring her career tally to 17.)

Over the course of a conversation at the Los Angeles offices of The Hollywood Reporter , the 63-year-old reflected on what led her to the Groundlings improv school and troupe, and how that shaped much of the rest of her career, including the parts she went on to play in Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion and The Comeback ; how a firing from the pilot of NBC’s Frasier and humbling herself to take a small part on Mad About You ended up paving the way for her association with Friends ; why her rollercoaster journey with The Comeback is, in some ways, “the highlight” of her career; plus more.

You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player above or read a few excerpts of it — lightly edited for clarity and brevity — below.

“I didn’t look like women who were getting cast as series regulars on sitcoms.