Lisa Kudrow recently shared how her former Friends costar Matt LeBlanc helped her overcome anxiety about her portrayal of Phoebe Buffay during the show’s early seasons.
On Sirius XM’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Kudrow admitted to co-host Ted Danson that “it took me ‘if not a year and a half, maybe two seasons, before I felt like I had Phoebe down.'”
She credited LeBlanc with helping her ease her concerns and find her footing as the beloved character.
“The things she said were so outrageously illogical that in order for me to justify them, you know, I felt like ‘Oof!'” she recalled.
“It just took a lot of work to figure out, “All right, how is it possible that I think this is true or a good idea or a reasonable thing to say?”
Although Kudrow put a lot of “acting work” into her role, she didn’t realise something wasn’t quite right until the second or third season.
“I’m like, ‘Something’s wrong,’ ‘cause I’m not doing the work I was doing,” she said. “I’m slacking off. I’m being lazy and I was getting really mad at myself, and LeBlanc came. He said, ‘What’s going on with you?’ I said, ‘I’m being lazy. I’m not doing the work that I did first season, second season. I’m not doing the work I did for Phoebe, so it can’t be good.'”
“And he went, ‘No, you know who the character is now. You don’t need to do the work you did. You got it,” and I went, ‘What? Oh,'” she continued.
Danson said that she could now feel “relaxed” because to LeBlanc’s assistance.
“That was enough,” Kudrow said. “It’s sort of like someone shook me ‘cause I was getting hysterical. I wasn’t literally getting hysterical, but you know like if you’re getting hysterical, someone slaps you back. You’re like, ‘Oh, thanks. That’s what I needed.'”