„It Wasn’t That Funny”. Lisa Kudrow Explained What “Irritated” Her Most During The Filming of Friends
Lisa Kudrow explained what was annoying about the filming of Friends. The presence of the audience in the studio greatly complicated the whole process.
Maybe not everyone knows this, but the TV series Friends was filmed in the presence of an audience, so the laughter we hear in the background belongs to the audience who watched the scenes live. And while this is a way of gaining a real reaction that allows you to forget about adding artificial laughter in post-production, it is somewhat troublesome for the performing actors, who on the one hand have to face live performances and on the other hand have to adapt them to the realities of television.
Lisa Kudrow, who played the role of Phoebe Buffay, had a problem with live performances because, as she confessed, the audience could interfere with recordings, which she found annoying. She recounted this when she was a guest on the Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend podcast.
[I was irritated] because they were laughing for too long. It wasn’t that funny. That’s why. It wasn’t an honest response, and it irritated me. It’s like, “now you’re just ruining the timing of the rest of the show.” Sometimes I would just look out if they’d been laughing too long, and go, “come on.” Really angry.
A TV show is not for the studio audience. It’s made for the TV viewers at home. That’s who we’re in service to. If it were a stage play – yeah, laugh as long as you want! I’ll figure out things to keep my character busy, waiting to continue with it, that’s fine. But then, it’s being filmed, and now I’m just sort of like standing there.
The actress was bothered by the fact that the audience disrupted the rhythm of the scenes, which had to play out smoothly in order to come off well in the TV series. The artists couldn't afford in such situations to “dialogue” with the audience, as they sometimes do in the theater, or to improvise for the duration of the chaos in the studio, as this would affect the flow of the scene too much.
Kudrow confessed that in such situations she had to start doing “things that you hate” like nodding to the audience, as if she was telling them: “That’s right, I said that.” Filming of Friends was thus a difficult process that required the actors to deal with the fact that they were dealing with an audience that interacted with them in some way.
