Lisa Kudrow Was Fired From A Major Sitcom Before Friends

Lisa Kudrow has reached the highest heights during her career, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t experienced lows, too. During a recent interview on the SmartLess podcast, the actor revealed that before finding fame on Friends, she was cast as Roz Doyle in Fraiser. However, her tenure on the sitcom didn’t last long.

“I didn’t film it; I got fired from Frasier,” Kudrow clarified, before recalling the “devastating” feedback she received from the show’s director James Burrows. During a run-through of the first episode, he told her, “This isn’t working,” she said.

The role of Roz Doyle eventually went to Perri Gilpin, who played the character throughout Fraiser’s 11-season run. Kudrow ultimately came to understand the decision.

“I was trying to [ask] like, ‘What can I do?’ But I think they did make a casting mistake [with me] because I went to the network with Perri Gilpin,” she said. “I think they were just correcting a mistake. ’Cause Perri should have always been Roz.”

After missing out on Fraiser, Kudrow quickly secured a role on another sitcom, Mad About You. While her agents advised her not to take the job, the actor explained on the SmartLess podcast that she was “not in a position to say no” at the time.

On Mad Abou You, Kudrow played the unnamed character of “Waitress.” After impressing the show’s writer and creator, Danny Jacobson, “Waitress” was eventually named Ursula Buffay — a character who later made her way on to Friends via her twin sister.

As Kudrow recalled on the podcast, another Mad About You writer recommended her for the role of Phoebe Buffay to Friends creator David Crane. The actor then crossed paths with a familiar face from Fraiser during her audition process: She was “the only cast member for Friends that had to audition for Jimmy Burrows.”

“When I had my audition ... it was just this small room,” she recalled. “[Burrows] is sitting at a desk. I’m in a chair, and the audition was like a little monologue. And when I’m done, he just went, ‘No notes.’ And I thought, ‘All right. I don’t know what that means. It’s hopeless.’”

Kudrow went on to land the role of Phoebe, playing the character on Friends for 10 seasons (1994-2004). She also became the first of her cast mates (Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and the late Matthew Perry) to receive an Emmy for her work on the show, winning the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series in 1998.