Kauffman, Crane, and Bright felt the same way about Perry. Too bad he was already on that alien airport show, or whatever it was. Perry would have been perfect, but they didn’t want to bring on any cast members in second position. “Second position” casting is a common but extremely awkward scenario in the television business: an actor who’s already working on one pilot or series gets cast in another pilot—with the assumption that the show they’re already working on will get canned, freeing them up for the new gig. On the other hand, if the actor’s first-position show isn’t canceled, then they’re stuck with it, and their second-position show has to be recast and reshot. It’s a necessary evil in an industry where projects fail far more often than succeed, but still, no one wants to cast their pilot with someone they have second dibs on.
Anyway, Kauffman and Crane thought, Chandler would be one of the easiest roles to cast. So much of the character’s humor was already built in; he had jokes, and lots of dialogue an actor could work with. But after three weeks and countless auditions, they still hadn’t found him. Perry himself had coached several candidates, many of whom were his friends. He even tried to teach them some of those specific mannerisms and speech patterns that became so iconic to the role. Could it be any more obvious?19
Also obvious, to Perry at least, was the fact that LAX 2194 was not a winner. Particularly not during this pilot season, which was packed with an unprecedented number of hits-to-be—ER, Party of Five, Chicago Hope, Touched by an Angel—and future beloved cult hits like My So-Called Life and The Critic. He called his agents constantly, begging them to book him a Friends audition. Yes, he’d be in second position, but surely he was a safe second.20
Meanwhile, the Friends creators were on their third week of Chandler readings. While no one fit the bill exactly, actor Craig Bierko came the closest. He was a good friend of Perry’s, and had been well-coached by him. Bierko had also been on The Powers That Be (the disastrous show Kauffman and Crane had created for Norman Lear), and they knew him to be a great actor and a good guy. He wasn’t a perfect fit, and some at the network thought he was downright wrong, but after nearly a month of auditioning every other available actor, it was time to move on. They offered Bierko the part and sent him the script. He declined.
Bierko has since gone on to have a successful career of his own, and while he will always be known as The One Who Turned Down Friends, he readily acknowledges that he only got the offer by doing a very good Matthew Perry impression. He had the chance to take the starring role in another pilot, which simply seemed like a better opportunity than being one of six in an ensemble. With the second-best Chandler out of the picture, Perry was finally able to nag his way into the room. His agents called to tell him he had an audition, and when Perry hung up the phone, a feeling came over him. “I instantly knew my whole life was going to change—which has never happened before or since then. I knew I was going to get it. I knew it was going to be huge. I just knew.”
Perry read for Kauffman on Wednesday, then Warner Bros. on Thursday, and once more, for NBC, on Friday. But as Kauffman remembered, it was a done deal from the first line: “He came in, and that was it.” Second position or not, he was worth the gamble. On Monday morning, Matthew Perry came to work. He was Chandler Bing.
Phoebe Buffay should have been a casting nightmare. She was a trapezoidal peg in a round hole. The character’s over-the-top bohemian vibe, combined with a backstory of hideous trauma, set her so far apart from the rest of the group that her presence itself begged the constant question: Why is she here? It should have taken months to find an actress who could juggle all of Phoebe’s oddities, maintain her level of woo-woo while remaining tethered to reality, and manage to convince an audience that she had a deep connection to these people with whom she had nothing at all in common. Then Lisa Kudrow walked in and just did it. Done.
During Friends’ heyday, much to-do would be made in the media over Kudrow’s prowess at playing ditzes despite the fact that, in reality, she’s an intelligent, highly educated woman. In later years, when Kudrow launched another successful career as a writer and producer (and actor), the narrative flipped. Turns out Phoebe’s actually smart! In both eras, Kudrow succeeded, in large part, due to one very wise decision: she didn’t listen to any of that. She just showed up and did her job.
By her own admission, Kudrow was a markedly serious young woman—so much so that her parents were concerned she’d never have a social or romantic life. She grew up in LA, but, like David Schwimmer, was raised in a family with no interest in Hollywood, and certainly not celebrity culture. She describes her mother, Nedra, a travel agent, as “the classiest lady that I’d ever encountered.” Nedra was reserved and refused to gossip, qualities that Kudrow always aspired to. On the other hand, her father was a talker. He had a performative nature, which he passed on to his children, of which Lisa was the youngest. Dr. Lee N. Kudrow was a renowned physician and researcher, specializing in headache medicine. From an early age, Kudrow intended to follow his example and go into medicine herself—not just because she greatly admired her father’s work, but because it seemed respectable.
At an even earlier age, Kudrow had wanted to be an actress. In nursery school she’d memorized and recited Alice in Wonderland to her family, and through her adolescence she did school plays and summer theater programs. But in high school, things changed. “That’s when I started thinking, ‘What kind of adult am I going to be?’” She loved performing, but the idea of calling herself an actress didn’t sit right. She had the (not entirely wrong) idea that actors were looked down upon, in the wider world, and perhaps she looked down on them, too. Plus, she had other interests. Kudrow was an excellent student, particularly adept at biology. She would become a doctor, she decided. “I thought, ‘Yeah that’s good. That’s the kind of mom I think your kids will be proud of.’”
Not many people enter high school considering the respect of their future children, but that’s the kind of teenager Kudrow was. She stuck to the plan through college. After graduating from Vassar with a BSc in biology, she went to work with her father on a study of hemispheric dominance and headache types,21 hoping that having her name on a published paper would be helpful in applying to graduate school.
But something changed that summer. She’d be driving around, listening to the radio, and an ad for some new sitcom would come on, reminding listeners to tune in that night. They’d play a clip of dialogue from the show—some joke with a big punch line, followed by a wave of laugh track. “This thought would pop into my head: ‘God, punching that joke so hard. Just throw it away. Lisa, remember to throw it away—it’ll be funnier.’” What? Where did that come from? It was spooky, but she couldn’t stop it. All of a sudden, Kudrow had this bossy little acting coach in her head. Every time she watched a TV show or heard an ad on the radio, it would pipe up: “Okay, remember to do it this way when you do it.”
Kudrow pushed back against herself. Remember your kids? You’re not going to be an actor. “I just kept trying to shove that away,” she recalled. Then one more voice chimed in, suggesting she give it a shot. This time, she listened—because that voice belonged to Jon Lovitz. Lovitz had been her older brother’s best friend since childhood, and she’d seen up close how long and hard he’d struggled to break into show business. But that summer, Lovitz was cast on Saturday Night Live. “And I realized, oh, my God. So this is something that actually can work out. For real people.” Maybe even people with kids.
Lovitz urged Kudrow to check out LA’s legendary improv comedy school, The Groundlings. Just take a class and see what happened—no harm in that, right? Right, Kudrow thought. She was twenty-two years old. She didn’t yet have children to raise or a mortgage to pay, or any of those looming adult responsibilities she’d been