There are few sitcoms more beloved by more people than Friends. The hilarious series about a group of young New Yorkers is a classic that continues to be a staple among audiences, even two decades after the finale. But the way the Friends cast filmed the series apparently didn’t particularly amuse Lisa Kudrow from time to time. At least that’s what Jennifer Aniston previously claimed… and her co-star has now refuted. Let’s get into it!
Jennifer Aniston’s Claim About Lisa Kudrow And The Friends Live Audience
When Jennifer Aniston spoke to Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson last month for an Actors on Actors interview, they got into Friends, including through a “happy tear” moment when the actress remembered the late Matthew Perry following his passing last year. While talking to one another, they started discussing the process of Friends being filmed as a multicam series with a studio audience on-set with them at Warner Bros. Studios. As Aniston noted:
Lisa Kudrow, by the way, hated when the audience laughed… She’d be like, ‘I’m not done! It’s not that funny!
The tidbit came up while Brunson was talking about how Friends did a great job of playing to the format because the cast handled the series like a play rather than saying a punchline and pausing for audience laughter in between jokes.
When Lisa Kudrow recently spoke to Entertainment Tonight, the fellow core Friends cast member spoke to Aniston’s comments. In her words:
No, that’s not exactly — no, no. It irritated me if they would laugh for too long. God bless them. They were so excited to be there that sometimes the laughter would just be longer than if they would have laughed at anything else. I was like, ‘All right, well, take it easy. It’s not that funny. And there’s more to say!’
It’s understandable! Imagine being an excited fan of Friends and getting the chance to see the cast record an episode in front of you. You might end up cracking up with more intensity than you would watching it on TV. While Kudrow wouldn’t say she “hated” the live audience, she did get “irritated” by them laughing too much at one joke when she had more lines to say in a scene. If you’ve seen Friends, you know what she’s talking about. Sometimes there’s someone who is laughing profusely, leading one of the cast members to have to disrupt their rhythm before saying something else that’s funny.
Friends, which is currently streaming for those with a Max subscription, belongs to an decreasingly popular format of television called the multi-camera sitcom. Other famous shows like The Golden Girls, Cheers, I Love Lucy, and Seinfeld contributed to the format. These days multicam shows are a rarity, but certainly do still exist – such as with ABC’s The Connors and Fox’s (admittedly short-lived) Call Me Kat.
Lisa Kudrow’s latest series, Time Bandits, is certainly not a multicam sitcom. It’s a adventure-driven comedy premiering on AppleTV+ on July 24.