How ‘The Comeback’ Led to Lisa Kudrow’s Gender-Flipped Starring Role on ‘Time Bandits’

A couple of years ago, Taika Waititi slid into Lisa Kudrow’s Instagram DMs with a once-in-a-lifetime proposition: How would she feel about visiting New Zealand for the first time and filming a fantasy show — a genre she had yet to explore — for six months?

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It was an offer that Kudrow, who was born and raised in Los Angeles and doesn’t particularly love to travel for long stretches of time, couldn’t pass up. The show in question was Time Bandits — Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris’ series adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy classic. The original film starred Gilliam’s Monty Python co-stars John Cleese and Michael Palin, as well as Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall and Ian Holm.

In the new Apple TV+ series, which premiered Wednesday, Kudrow stars as Penelope, the de facto leader of a ragtag group of thieves who is forced to journey through time and space with an 11-year-old, history-obsessed boy named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) who accidentally joins the team after a portal opens up in his bedroom.

“[Penelope] thinks of herself as the leader, but doesn’t want to say it because she thinks it’ll make everybody else feel better,” Kudrow tells The Hollywood Reporter .

Waititi plays the Supreme Being, from whom the bandits stole the map of the universe to time travel; Clement plays the Supreme Being’s cosmic arch-nemesis, Pure Evil, who dispatches his demonic minions to retrieve the map that will give him total control. Penelope’s traveling time bandits are played by Charlyne Yi (who went public about behind-the-scenes difficulties they experienced on set), Tadhg Murphy, Rune Temte and Roger Jean Nsengiyumva.

“I think [Penelope’s motivation] comes from the insult of not being appreciated by the Supreme Being,” Kudrow explains of the overarching conflict that drives the 10-episode first season. “And for her and the other bandits who came with her, [they’re] all from the realm of the Supreme Being and felt unappreciated, and they stole the map so that they could travel through time.”

The role continues Kudrow’s trend of playing charming, comedic characters who lack a certain amount of self-awareness. “When I do really stupid things, just being completely unaware of something, that’s what makes me laugh the hardest,” she explains of her attraction to offbeat humor. “And it’s very human also, I think, to just not be aware of how you actually move through the world and how you’re perceived and what effect you’re having.”

The creators of the new Time Bandits were already big fans of Friends . (Waititi even wore a “Smelly Cat” t-shirt in front of Kudrow one day.) But it was her starring role in HBO’s satirical mockumentary series The Comeback — in which she plays a former sitcom star so desperate to revive her struggling career that she agrees to make a companion reality series about her life — that made them think she would be the best fit for the lead role. “More than anything, it revolves around Lisa playing the role of someone striving for something beyond their capabilities, which could also be said of Penelope,” Morris tells THR .

“I think The Comeback is one of the greatest shows ever made in America, and she just really carries that show,” adds Waititi, who first met Kudrow through a mutual friend, Jennifer Aniston . “I think it solidifies just how much of a comic legend she is.”

The leader of the bandits was originally a man named Randall, after the character played by David Rappaport in the film. But once Kudrow signed on to the project, the creators retooled the role specifically for her.

Randall was initially described as “the leader who’s afraid of everything. And I said, ‘Afraid of his own shadow. That’s very funny,’” Kudrow says. “‘But I think for me, I’m going to play [Penelope] very courageous when it doesn’t make sense to be courageous, when there’s no call for being courageous. It’s more bravado and arrogant, based on no talent for anything. That, to me, is funny.’”

But when flipping the gender of the character, Waititi says, “I wanted to avoid something that typically happens when you cast women in these roles where they’re leading people — they become super rational, they’re the one who never makes mistakes, and they’re always the sensible one who’s carrying everyone. I really wanted to avoid that and have [Kudrow] play what is normally written for men.”

The result is a part that combines Kudrow’s chops as a seasoned comedic actor — her improvisational skills, her unexpected line deliveries — with an underlying pathos that sneaks up on the viewer. “She’s fantastically moving and small for the emotional parts,” Morris says. “I was lucky enough to direct her in a scene towards the end of the series where things go wrong for Penelope. The heartbreaking confusion she brought to that scene had me weeping at the monitor.”

Having developed and executive produced all 11 seasons of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are? , which was briefly revived at NBC in 2022 before being shelved indefinitely, Kudrow also relished the opportunity to learn more about the various eras that the time bandits visit — such as the Chinese pirate leader Zheng Yi Sao in the premiere.

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“I just love that it wasn’t exclusively European history, which is basically all I’ve ever learned about, honestly, as an American [with] that European slant,” she says. “So I love that it’s got these little introductions to whole other parts of the world that have a history and a culture.”

Even though she is a history buff, Kudrow says she didn’t necessarily grow up loving the subject. “I just don’t think it’s taught really well in school, and the thing I loved about Who Do You Think You Are? is it personalized history, so it made it accessible because it’s through the lens of human beings and how it actually impacted their everyday lives or a whole lineage,” she explains. “I liked in here that these people from history are human beings in Time Bandits who were like, ‘Where do you think I should hide my boats? I was thinking of doing that, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not.’ And Kevin’s there to say, ‘Oh, it was a good idea because you did escape this hazard.’ I love that about this show.”

So many of Kudrow’s choices — as is the case for so many actors who have enough name recognition and economic power to champion the stories they want to tell — are guided by her desire to choose her collaborators. After working so closely with Waititi, Clement and Morris, whom she considers “iconic talents” for their work in Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows , Kudrow signed on to play Ray Romano’s wife in Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman ’s next Netflix dark comedy series, No Good Deed . (She could not share any other details apart from saying that it was “heaven” to work opposite Romano.)

Kudrow still gets plenty of offers to lead multicam comedy pilots. She has yet to rule out a return to network TV one day, even though she concedes the format may be more difficult to execute now. “Comedy is all about surprise, and the audience needs to buy into this proscenium-type show performance, so I think it would take a lot to get people on board with something like that,” she says. “We’re used to things that are just a little more real, more slice of life, but God, I would love [to do a show that is] at least just pure comedy.”

But does she ever see herself following in the footsteps of her former Friends costars Aniston and Courteney Cox and making the transition to more dramatic roles? “I just like to do things that are entertaining and that could be fun to do. That doesn’t mean a drama can’t be fun to do, but a drama show, like a one-hour show, that would be a lot. It depends. Look, I don’t know. I’ll just say, yes, why not?” she laughs, while throwing her hands up in the air.

Kudrow, in recent years, has even begun to revisit some of her past projects. She and Mira Sorvino remain in regular contact with Robin Schiff, the writer and executive producer of their 1997 cult classic film Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion , about revisiting the titular women at a later stage of their lives. Kudrow confirms that she has even read a draft of Schiff’s script for a potential sequel, but she cannot confirm whether that film will ever see the light of day.

Likewise, Kudrow, who remains thrilled that audiences are still discovering and rewatching The Comeback , would “love to” revisit the character of Valerie Cherish with Sex and the City and And Just Like That executive producer Michael Patrick King. “We only think about it absolutely every time we get together; we are always talking about what comes next. Always,” she says.

But perhaps more poignantly, Kudrow admits she has finally begun to watch reruns of Friends — something she wasn’t able to do for years after the end of the beloved NBC sitcom — in large part to remember her late costar Matthew Perry, who died last October . “Honestly, I wasn’t able to watch it because it’s too embarrassing to watch yourself, but if I make it about Matthew, then that’s okay,” she says with a fond but wistful smile. “And it’s just celebrating how hilarious he was — and that is what I want to remember.”

Friends premiered on Sept. 22, 1994, to 21.5 million viewers, immediately transforming its cast — who played six best friends living in New York City — into global superstars. The show ran for 10 seasons and 236 episodes, with this past May marking the 20-year anniversary of the series finale. While catching up on old episodes, Kudrow says she is recalling just how funny the show was in its prime.

“I’m blown away by Courteney Cox. I’m blown away by Jen. Matthew, obviously, is just uniquely hilarious. No one ever knew that cadence or comedic rhythm before him. Matt LeBlanc is hilarious. And David Schwimmer, too. Sometimes I even laugh at what I’ve done,” Kudrow says with a self-deprecating laugh. “So yeah, I mean, that’s my own little way of celebrating [the anniversaries], just watching it. But it’s embarrassing. At home, if anyone walks in the room and I’m watching Friends , that’s a horrible look, I think, don’t you?”

Despite her reluctance to be caught watching Friends on her own time, Kudrow has rarely shied away from discussing her time on the series. While other actors from long-running shows may feel the need to walk the tightrope between embracing the role that made them famous and wanting to move away from their star-making turn, Kudrow says she has “always loved” Phoebe Buffay and has never resented or resisted discussing the character, because “it doesn’t help anything” nor is it “my inclination.”

“I did get offered a lot of things and did a lot of things because [people thought], ‘Oh, you play spacey idiots well.’ Alright, that’s fine. But luckily, I did a lot of independent films when I was on Friends , and those were not Phoebe-like characters at all. It doesn’t matter that not a lot of people saw them. That’s okay,” Kudrow says. “Because thanks to Friends and Phoebe, I got to do those independent films, I got to do The Comeback , I got to do Web Therapy — I got to do a lot of stuff. That’s the opportunity that I got to even produce Who Do You Think You Are? , which gave me an enormous amount of pride and joy to do, so how can there be anything but [wanting to say] thank you [to Friends ]? That’s how I see it.”

Time Bandits is now streaming on Apple TV+, with two new episodes airing every Wednesday through Aug. 21.

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