Lisa Kudrow Grew ‘Really Angry’ at ‘Friends’ Studio Audience Because They’d Be ‘Laughing Too Long’ When Things ‘Weren’t Funny’: ‘It Irritated Me’

Lisa Kudrow said on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast that she often grew irritated with the live studio audience on the “Friends” set because they would laugh for too long at moments she just didn’t think required that dramatic of a response. Kudrow played Phoebe Buffay on all 10 seasons of the NBC sitcom, and the role earned her six Emmy nominations and one win for best supporting actress in a comedy series.

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“Because they were laughing for too long. It wasn’t that funny. That’s why,” Kudrow said when O’Brien brought up Kudrow’s annoyance with the live studio audience. “It wasn’t an honest response and it irritated me. Now you’re just ruining the timing of the rest of the show. There are other lines. Sometimes I would just look out if they’d been laughing too long, and go, ‘Come on’. Really angry.”

“A TV show is not for the studio audience,” Kudrow continued. “It is made for the TV viewers at home. That’s who we are in service to. If it was a stage play, yeah laugh as long as you want. I’ll figure out things to keep my character busy waiting to continue with it. That’s fine. It’s being filmed and now I’m just standing there … you do like nod, ‘Yeah, I said that.’ It’s terrible. They instructed our audience not to do anything like that, I think.”

Kudrow noted that “Friends” would often spend six to eight hours filming just one half-hour episode, so the production would do “so many takes” that eventually the audience would “stop laughing.” The writers would then react by thinking the material no longer worked, thus forcing rewrites and more takes.

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“But it worked the first time!” Kudrow said. “All I knew is you’re going to take the laugh track from the first take and move it to whatever take this is. Who is suffering because they’re not laughing? I am okay if they aren’t laughing as hard. We can keep going.”

Watch more of Kudrow’s appearance on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast in the video below.

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