New Delhi: Lisa Kudrow has opened up about the challenges she faced early in her career, revealing that she was told she was not “gorgeous” enough to be cast as a series regular on a sitcom. In a recent interview with Awards Chatter, the actor reflected on the beauty standards that shaped casting in television at the time.
“It’s very hard because you’re not gorgeous, and they want gorgeous,” she recalled being told directly.
Kudrow said she did not necessarily find the comment unreasonable, explaining, “I don’t think that’s ridiculous. I got it. Also, it’s not just how you look; it’s how you act, too,” she said. She added that she didn’t want to fit the industry’s idea of a conventionally attractive female sitcom star.
“I’m not ‘cute.’ And God, I didn’t want to be cute,” she said.
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Rachel as Jewish American princess?
Interestingly, before becoming Phoebe Buffay on Friends, Kudrow wanted to play Rachel Green, the role eventually played by Jennifer Aniston.
She recalled telling her agents that she could bring humour to Rachel’s identity as a “Jewish American Princess.”
“Idiot that I am, I went, ‘Oh, but you know what? I got to say, Rachel is Jewish. And boy, I love doing a Jewish American Princess. I think I could make that really funny,’” Kudrow recalled.
According to Kudrow, her agents eventually explained that the producers were struggling to find someone for Phoebe and did not want to risk changing that casting.
“They went, ‘No, no. It’s so hard for them to find Phoebe. They’re not messing with that,’” she recalled.
Kudrow ultimately played Phoebe for all seasons of the show, earning an Emmy for the role in 1998. Yet she said the industry did not initially have much faith in what she could achieve beyond the sitcom.
“Nobody cared about me,” Kudrow said, recalling how some people at her talent agency referred to her as “the sixth Friend.”
“There was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have. There was just, like, ‘boy is she lucky she got on that show,’” she recalled.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)