That was it for biomedical research. Kudrow went from taking classes at The Groundlings to teaching them part-time. Still, it took a while to step out of her comfort zone, even as she began to build a roster of characters. The first one she ever performed was a biology professor. “I started with what I knew,” she recalled. And then she pretty much continued as such, creating a host of very smart, very serious academic types, whose humor lay in the fact that they didn’t realize how boring they were. Kudrow was great at playing these roles and, ever the A-student, she stayed in her lane—until the day her teacher, Tracy Newman,22 nudged her out of it. “We’ve never seen a dumb character from you,” she told Kudrow. “We need to see an airhead. Just go for it.”
She quickly whipped up something based on girls she’d known in high school, and soon discovered she could play dumb as well as smart. One airhead led to another, and she wound up getting cast in her first play, Ladies’ Room, written by Robin Schiff (another Groundling), for which she created the character Michele. She had about five minutes of stage time in Ladies’ Room, but Michele would later reemerge as one of Kudrow’s most beloved film roles, in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (also written by Schiff).
Kudrow kept a day job, doing administrative work in her fa ther’s office, while she began to pick up more auditions here and there. The Groundlings gave her a degree of visibility, but she was never touted as one of the group’s superstars (or else she didn’t see herself as such). Still, as she landed her first, small television gigs, Kudrow began to form a new career goal: she wanted to be on a sitcom.
Almost immediately, the dream came true. In 1993, Kudrow got a principal role in one of the hottest new pilots of the year—one that had all the elements working in its favor: it was the spin-off of an incredibly popular sitcom, it featured an established TV star, and Burrows was attached to direct. Lisa Kudrow had won the part of Roz on Frasier. Four days into production, she was fired.
“They originally wanted Peri Gilpin,” Kudrow would later explain of the Frasier debacle. The part of Roz had actually been written for her, though Kudrow didn’t yet know that. And thanks to her training, Kudrow had gotten very good at auditioning—sometimes to her detriment. She could nail a scene in the room, even if she knew in the back of her mind that she wasn’t right for the role, and would never be able to sustain the performance long-term. Unfortunately, she learned that lesson on Frasier. Kudrow tanked the first table-read. “Then at the rehearsals Jimmy would say, ‘It’s not working, don’t worry about it, don’t even try.’” She was sure Burrows hated her, that everyone hated her. The chemistry just didn’t work, and as production fumbled forward, Kudrow felt all eyes on her. Whatever magic she’d had in the audition room, it was long gone. Kudrow was quickly fired (and nicely fired, she insisted) and replaced by Gilpin.
Maybe it was a sign, Kudrow thought. She’d gotten her big shot and blown it so tremendously, so publicly. This whole city—this whole planet—was full of people who wanted to make it, and never would. Maybe you’re one of those people, she thought. Maybe you’re just not meant to do it. Her old friend and director, Robin Schiff, tried to pep her up, giving her the classic when-one-door-closes-a-window-opens talk. The city was also full of scripts in development and shows in production, windows aplenty. Kudrow waved off the platitude. Then she got another call, from actor Richard Kind—who gave her the opposite of a pep talk: “I heard what happened and I can’t believe it… How [do] you get out of bed every morning, get dressed, walk out the door, and show yourself in public? I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
It was so melodramatic that Kudrow snapped out of it. She’d lost a TV show, not a lung. She would survive this and, in fact, she was doing okay. Every day, she did go out in public, taking morning walks to the pastry shop, Michel Richard, where she’d treat herself to a pain au chocolat and a coffee, and then stroll around the neighborhood. Her brown hair began to lighten in the sun, and something about it made her feel better. She went to a colorist, asking her to match the new golden highlights in her hair, and over the course of six months, as she muddled through the post-Frasier funk, Kudrow became a full-blown blonde. “It literally lightened me up,” she said. It was an internal shift as much as a physical one, and with one door firmly closed and behind her, she was on the lookout for her next big window.
Any window, really—didn’t have to be a big one. Kudrow was in better emotional shape but financially not so much. She began looking around for another day job when her agent called one morning. Danny Jacobson, the cocreator and executive producer of Mad About You, wanted her for a waitress role. (Kudrow had previously appeared in a Season One flashback episode, and though it was a tiny part, she’d made a strong impression.) It was a last-minute thing, and the nameless character had just a couple lines of dialogue, so she wouldn’t have to audition or anything, but she’d get a guest-star credit. “I don’t think you should do it,” Kudrow’s agent told her. It was disrespectful, calling her in for a no-name role without even sending her sides to read, and anyway, “you’d have to be there, like, in an hour.” Kudrow jumped in the car.
The no-name waitress was a hit, and by the end of the week, Jacobson asked if she might be available for a few more episodes. Soon, she had a name—Ursula—and even a small fan base. Sometimes people on the street recognized Kudrow as the clueless waitress from Mad About You, and TV Guide gave her a “cheers” in the Cheers & Jeers section. That alone felt like a watershed moment to Kudrow. She was back! It was happening! If nothing else happened, she would always know that she had been a popular, recurring (not regular, but whatever) character on what everyone agreed was the best comedy on network television. If this was the top, great. And it probably would be, so she’d better do her damnedest not to screw this up.
Pilot season came around again, and like everyone else, Kudrow heard the chatter about this hot new script about a group of friends who hung out in a coffee shop. Jeffrey Klarik was a writer on Mad About You, as well as David Crane’s boyfriend. Kudrow didn’t know that at the time, but later she’d speculate that Klarik was the reason she wound up getting called in for Phoebe, and went straight to the producers to read. As Kauffman recalled, when Kudrow began to speak, it was in Phoebe’s voice, just as they had written it. “It was exactly what we heard.”
Next, she was sent to read for Burrows—and Kudrow knew it was over. He hated her, she was sure. During the disastrous Frasier pilot, it was Burrows who’d first recognized that she was the disaster. So, fine, this would be the end of the line for Friends, but who cared? She still had Mad About You. Knowing she had nothing to lose, Kudrow breezed through the audition for Burrows, who nodded and dismissed her, saying only, “No notes.” In truth, Burrows had no notes because, like everyone else, he saw immediately that Kudrow was Phoebe. The only problem was that she was Ursula, too.
It wouldn’t be unheard of for a series-regular actress to occasionally pop up in a recurring role on another show. But Mad About You and Friends were on the same network, the same night, and scheduled back-to-back at 8:00 p.m. and 8:30. And, of course, they were both set in Manhattan. It just wouldn’t work to have the waitress from Riff’s zipping downtown every night to live her double life as a West Village massage therapist. Thus, Phoebe became a twin.23 Kauffman and Crane came up with the idea, and ran it by Danny Jacobson, who—to everyone’s surprise—said sure, no problem. “I don’t know that we would have said yes to that,” Crane recalled. Again, it didn’t hurt that Klarik was there to help mediate. And Mad About You was a rock-solid hit. Friends was just a promising newbie that was lucky enough to be riding into Thursday night, cushioned cozily between one popular comedy and one spectacularly popular comedy.