![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1397725_012914_updates.jpg\")
Lisa Kudrow reflects on being the ‘forgotten Friend’\u00a0<\/p>\n Lisa Kudrow reflects on being the ‘forgotten Friend’\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lisa Kudrow may have been part of one of television\u2019s biggest hits, but she says her career never followed the same trajectory as her co-stars from Friends.<\/p>\n
Despite the show\u2019s massive success, Kudrow admitted she often felt overlooked in Hollywood. \u201cNobody cared about me,\u201d she told the Independent in a recent interview, recalling how some within her own agency referred to her as \u201cthe sixth Friend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re not related, you live far away,\u201d Rachel once told Phoebe Buffay in a fit of pique. \u201cYou lift right out!\u201d 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 \u201cthe other\u201d in later roles as well.<\/p>\n
“There was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have. There was just, like, \u2018boy is she lucky she got on that show\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
While her co-stars quickly moved into high-profile roles, Kudrow found herself gravitating toward characters that were unconventional or secondary\u2014often playing outsiders rather than leading, high impact figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She added at another point, “I was the odd one out. I thought\u2026 maybe? I mean, it\u2019s a good show, but I don\u2019t know about that. But I\u2019m just that kind of person”.<\/p>\n
That pattern of lesser-seen performances continued even after Friends ended in 2004. Her HBO series The Comeback,\u00a0now 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.<\/p>\n
Kudrow\u2019s longtime collaborator Michael Patrick King noted that many of her roles reflect characters who are \u201cnot chosen\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at how many magnificent, not-chosen characters Lisa has played,\u201d he said. \u201cOr don\u2019t-look-at-me characters. It\u2019s really special. And it\u2019s what\u2019s so thrilling about Valerie \u2013 we\u2019re taking the outsider and making her the main character. She\u2019s a character so outside that you can\u2019t look away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valerie was first introduced in 2005, a year after Friends went off the air.\u00a0 In The Comeback\u2019s first season, she agreed to film a reality show all about her return to television.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were watching it covering their eyes. They\u2019d say \u2018it\u2019s so cringe\u2019. But really it\u2019s so human. It taps into all of our worst fears,\u201d she said of the mixed reactions the show bagged back in 2005.\u00a0The Comeback was cancelled after its first season, but a\u00a0second season later arrived in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to just surrender to that decision,\u201d Kudrow says now of the hiatus. \u201cWe weren\u2019t going to knock on doors begging them to bring it back,\u201d King added.<\/p>\n
And now, The Comeback has returned with a third season 12 years later for a final run.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, unlike Valerie, we don\u2019t have to worry about our rent,\u201d King said, \u201cso we don\u2019t have to make the show unless there\u2019s something we really want to say\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lisa Kudrow reflects on being the ‘forgotten Friend’\u00a0 Lisa Kudrow may have been part of one of television\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-363267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}