Lisa Kudrow Reveals What Made the ‘Friends’ Live Audience Hard to Handle – While Speaking to Jimmy Fallon’s Live Audience

Lisa Kudrow was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night to promote her new show, No Good Deed. But there was a different show that frequently came up in discussion—Friends, of course.

Kudrow played the free spirit Phoebe Buffay on that show, and it’s still the thing she’s most recognized for. Fallon asked Kudrow if she missed the live audience, “because you did Friends so many years in front of a live audience.” When the audience cheered, Fallon asked, “Does this feel good? This is what I’m talking about.” Kudrow said it felt great, but she had had a few issues with the live audience on Friends. “I had felt, while we were doing the show, that we’re doing a TV show, not a live show,” she said. “So, they’re laughing too much.”

“You know, after a certain point, anything anyone says was like [imitating hysterical laughter],” Kudrow said. “It’s too long and it’s kind of interrupting the rhythm and the flow.” She and Fallon commiserated over the audience’s “ooohs” and “aaahs” while the actual audience joined in, apparently not insulted.

“Sometimes, honestly, I would just be in a scene and I’d hear that [the audience] and I would be like, ‘Come on.'” Kudrow said. “Come on, it’s not that funny.”

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Fallon’s live audience continued to listen as Fallon asked another Friends question, this time about Phoebe’s famous song “Smelly Cat.” Kudrow wasn’t a musical person, she revealed, but people constantly asked her to sing “Smelly Cat” or play it on the guitar, and she always let them down. She only knew a few chords – but she has actually played “Smelly Cat” live before if you’re desperate to hear her perform it outside of Friends. She played it with Taylor Swift during the 1989 World Tour in 2015, and the performance passed into legend.

Kudrow’s been talking about Friends a lot while on the promo tour for No Good Deed. She recently revealed that all the cast members found it hard to meet up as a group of six after the show ended, even though they were super close while the show was going on. She told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on his podcast Dinner’s On Me that Friends: The Reunion in 2021 was the first time they’d been able to get together as a group in ages. “It was so great that it was like ‘we should do this more,'” she said.

Unfortunately, due to a tragedy, the Friends cast will never all be in the same room again. Matthew Perry died last year from the effects of ketamine, drowning in his hot tub. It was a terrible blow for the rest of the actors. “It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a shock,” Kudrow told Ferguson. “It was a big jolt. Personally, I think he died happy. I think in the days around his passing, I think he was happy and excited about what’s happening next.”

Kudrow is forever associated with Friends, but she seems happy to talk about it and the people who made it, even when she’s promoting other projects. It remains to be seen what will happen next time she’s in front of a live audience who are laughing too much, though.