Lisa Kudrow has revealed the “devastating” effect being fired from Frasier had on her confidence and left her fearing she was “hopeless” when later cast in Friends.
The actress, 61, was hired to play the part of producer Roz Doyle back in 1993 opposite Kelsey Grammer in the title role, but she was replaced by Peri Gilpin before the pilot was filmed.
Appearing as a guest on the Smartless podcast, she recalled how the director James Burrows, who she would go on to work with on Friends, stopped a script run-though to declare “this isn't working.”
The mum-of-one said: “I was trying to like [ask], ‘What can I do?’ But I think they did make a casting mistake because I went to the network with Perri Gilpin. I think they were just correcting a mistake. Cause Perri should have always been Roz.”
Her unceremonious sacking would eventually lead to her landing her life-changing role on Friday via a bit-part in comedy series Mad About You.
She explained: ”I did a guest star on Mad About You, they had me back, I'd already done a guest star the first season.
“So now I'm there for a different character [just called 'waitress'] and my agent said, ‘You're not doing this’. [I was] not in a position to say no. It's to me the best show and I'm doing it.”
Kudrow was invited back a further five times, leaving her thrilled because she thought to herself “there's my rent for the year”.
The show's writer and producer Jeffrey Klarik later suggested Kudrow for the role of Phoebe Buffay when his partner David Crane was putting together the cast of Friends.
One hurdle she had to overcome first was encountering her former Frasier director Burrows again when she auditioned for her Friends role.
She came away worrying it was “hopeless”' but she went on to land the role.
Kudrow’s work was rewarded with an Emmy for Best Actress for the role, which she played from 1994 to 2004.
Kudrow, along with castmates Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox and Matthew Perry, would go on to earn $1million per episode in the later seasons of the globally loved series.
