Friends fans have Conan O’Brien to thank for Phoebe Buffay’s perfect casting.
On Monday’s episode of the Smartless podcast (hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett), Lisa Kudrow surprisingly revealed that she almost gave up on pursuing an acting career altogether—until she met O’Brien.
“I would’ve quit if not for Conan,” the Time Bandits star admitted. The two first crossed paths in a pre-Groundlings improv class in Los Angeles shortly after Kudrow graduated pre-med from Vassar College. “I couldn’t take Groundlings classes because… I hadn’t had enough experience with anything, so they sent me to Cynthia Seghetti, an improv teacher at the Coronet,” she explained. “I went to the first class and thought, ‘Oh no, these are not my people and I can’t do this … This isn’t fun. I think I’m out of acting forever.’”
Discouraged but not wanting to bow out immediately, Kudrow resolved to go to just one more class. Then, a “really tall redhead” caught her attention and changed the course of sitcom history as we know it.
“I was a little late, and everyone was up there. I was like, ‘No, no I don’t want to break the flow, I’ll just sit here and watch and die,’” she recalled. “They were lifting a disc or something. One of them was doing it, and it was Conan, this really tall redhead guy. [He’s] lifting the disc, and when he’s angry, he’s just kind of angry. He’s just really lifting a disc, or throwing this spaceball, without too much.”
“And I went, ‘Oh, that’s commitment. It’s not embarrassing, you’re just really doing it.’ And so I thought, ‘OK, that guy,’” she continued. “So I made sure I made a beeline to him, I said, ‘Hi, I’m Lisa. That was really good.’ And he said, ‘I’m Conan.’”
From that moment on, Kudrow says she and O’Brien became “best friends.” Earlier this month, the duo reunited on the former late-night host’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and reminisced about the moment they met.
“I go to this improv class, and I notice the person who I thought was the funniest, most interesting person in the room, Lisa, and I start talking to her,” O’Brien recalled. “She seemed very confident.”
“Well, I was confident once I saw you in the class and I figured out what to do based on what you were doing,” Kudrow laughed in response.
Needless to say, both have gone on to have incredibly impressive careers since that improv class.
Kudrow has been nominated for 15 Emmy Awards, taking home the Outstanding Comedy Actress award in 1998 for her performance as Phoebe. Aside from Friends and Time Bandits, she’s also starred in P.S. I Love You, Web Therapy, The Comeback, and numerous other acclaimed shows and films. And all because she took a chance and showed up to one more improv class.
