Lisa Kudrow has made a career of playing Friends on TV and in movies. Here she gets friendly about life off camera from how her dad urged her to have sex with her boyfriend to what she loves most about her "good brain" husband.
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It's only a matter of time before your friends start to bug you, whether they're real or in your television set. So it's odd that Lisa Kudrow's ditzy Phoebe from Friends isn't irritating anyone yet. Maybe it's because she just hovers in the background most of the time, and when she interjects the occasional good joke, she delivers it with just the right amount of restraint to keep it happily in the air for a while.
Kudrow is different from her Friends in real life, too. A Vassar grad and the only married cast member, she'll soon be the only parent, too.
Like her Friends, though, Kudrow has been hitting the big screen these days. After a small part as Albert Brooks's date in Mother, she costarred with Mira Sorvino in last year's Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, then took a lead in the indie Clockwatchers. Now she's back in a small part in the small indie The Opposite of Sex, in which she yet again plays the best friend.
DENNIS HENSLEY: I heard The Opposite of Sex is pretty racy, but in it you have a line where you say you'd rather have great shampoo than great sex.
LISA KUDROW: Right. My character is uptight and annoying. I play the best friend of Martin Donovan, who's a gay teacher in a relationship with a young lover. Everything's fine until his half sister, Christina Ricci, comes to live with him and causes one problem after another.
Q: What appealed to you about the movie?
A: It was a good script, from start to finish, and I knew Christina Ricci was going to be in it. She's amazing, the most professional actor I think I've ever met. You can be chatting with her and when they call action she's right there. There's no drama with her.
Q: I hear you make out with Lyle Lovett in the film.
A: That's right. I've been where Julia Roberts has been.
Q: How hard was it to not go for his hair?
A: [Laughs] It wasn't hard at all because my character is so uptight it wasn't going to happen.
Q: What's Lyle like?
A: He's so cool and the biggest Southern gentleman I've ever met in my life. Like, the minute you walk in the room, he gets up.
Q: Do you have anything in common with your prudish character?
A: I definitely relate to the uptight part, because that's mostly who I was when I was growing up.
Q: Ever said great shampoo is better than great sex?
A: Yeah, I think I said something like that before I had sex. And probably after I just started having sex, too. My mom told me, "Keep doing it. It gets better."
Q: You talked to your mom about sex?
A: Yeah, I'd tell my parents everything. I had no life, so I could tell them everything. I waited until college [to lose my virginity]. I was a priss. I wanted to wait until marriage, because I thought, "Every man wants to many a virgin." I think my dad had told me that when I was younger.
Q: Did you learn nothing from Pretty Woman?
A: I thought that movie was bullshit. She was not entitled to ask for the picket fence and white knight. When you decide to become a prostitute you give up certain entitlements.
Q: What films influenced your ideas about love and sex?
A: Old movies like Life With Father, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Margie, Cheaper by the Dozen. They were all set when girls weren't supposed to [have sex]. For some reason, I decided that's the world I wanted to grow up in. I don't know where it came from. My parents were much more liberal.
Q: Did they ever wonder about you?
A: My college boyfriend of a year came to visit me at home, and my dad noticed we weren't kissing each other, so he had a talk with me. He wondered what was going on-- why no affection? He asked, "When your mother and I go to work in the morning, you sneak in his room don't you?" I said, "No, I don't!" I swear he almost yelled at me and said, "You're a freak. That's what young people are supposed to do! I can't talk to you." And he walked away.
Q: Wow, I've never heard of that before. It's usually the other way around.
A: What can I say?
Q: Getting back to movies, do you feel a lot of pressure to be in a hit since you're such a hit on TV?
A: I decided early on that I don't know anything about movies. I was just learning about TV. I'm not going to pretend that I know what's going to be the script for me.
Q: How did you feel about the performance of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion at the box office?
A: For me Romy and Michele was about gathering information and getting experience, and I feel pretty lucky that it came out fine. It wasn't a blockbuster, but it opened at number two and it made money for the studio. But then you read, like, Entertainment Weekly and they say that [all the movies by Friends cast members] bombed except for Scream. So it's like there's blockbuster or bomb. Nothing in between. I don't understand big-film pressure. Like, if you're going to make a film it has to be great and it has to make $200 million. It's just unrealistic. I didn't know that it was presumptuous for an actor to be in a film.
Q: Did you get to keep the great duds from Romy and Michele?
A: No. They're at Disney.
Q: They'll need them for a theme park ride.
A: Right, one where you ride on a giant feather boa.
Q: Does it ever bother you that the media pits you and your Friends costars against each other?
A: The first thing I learned after the initial extravaganza we went through is that it doesn't matter. They either love you or they hate you. You don't have to say a word or do a thing and they'll decide.
Q: When Friends first took off was your head spinning?
A: Yeah, but I was holding on to it, trying to get some perspective. All I could think was, "OK, we're not this good."
Q: Was there a moment where you thought, "It's official, we're overexposed?"
A: None of us knew how much press we were supposed to do. It was part of the job. The studio was saying, "We need to do this." But we were thinking, Do we really need to do this? Some of us were more savvy about it. I was not one of the real savvy ones.
Q: Did you feel a backlash?
A: Yeah. I felt that as unreasonably loved that we were, we were also unreasonably despised at some point. Especially with the movie stuff.
Q: There must have been some thrilling times, too, when you first hit it big.
A: God, where do I start? One of the first great experiences was before the show even aired. Jim Burrows, who directed the show, thought it would be a good idea for Warner Bros, to let us use their jet to fly the six of us to Las Vegas. He took us to dinner at Spago, we gambled and then flew home.
Q: Whose money were you gambling?
A: Our own. But if you forgot money, Jim had some for you.
Q: Was he protective?
A: At dinner he looked at us like we were all his children and said, "This is the last time you'll be able to go out together to a place like this."
Q: Was he right?
A: Yes.
Q: What would happen if you all hit Spago tonight?
A: Somehow autograph people and photographers would show up. A couple of weeks ago me and Courteney [Cox] and Jennifer [Aniston] went out to lunch. As we were leaving the restaurant we saw cameramen outside. Soon after in the National Enquirer there was this story about how Courteney and Jennifer had a baby shower for me. It was the three of us just having lunch, but now since I'm showing I guess it became a baby shower. Funny how that works.
Q: Where's the strangest place you've ever been recognized?
A: At night in a hotel Jacuzzi by an older woman and her husband. She said, "Oh, you're that one! You're on that show!" Then they got it wrong and said, "Do that Alley Cat song!" instead of "Smelly Cat."
Q: Meanwhile, you're half naked, boiling in water. Have you ever been starstruck yourself?
A: Oh yeah. Shirley MacLaine stopped by the set of The Opposite of Sex and said, "You're so funny" then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear. I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out because it was too good to be true. She moved in close to me and said, "You know, the wonderful thing about you and what you do is ..." Then she said nothing. She just paused for about 20 seconds, so help me God. Just as it was about to come out, someone walked up to her and said, "Hello Shirley!" And she turned and talked to them.
Q: She never told you?
A: No, and I didn't know how to get it out of her. But that's OK. She asked me to be in a movie she's directing, but the character needs to have a really great body and stuff and I'm not right for it right now with the pregnancy.
Q: Let's talk about your husband, Michel Stem. You two met just before Friends took off. That must have been an interesting journey for him.
A: Yeah, but he's such a good brain. He's really honest and kind, and if he doesn't like something he tells me in a delicate way. When he does like something, then I know he really likes it. It's grounding.
Q: What's the coolest thing about having a French husband?
A: Everything he says is a sweet nothing. It all comes out romantic because he'll throw in a "mon amour" at the end. He hardly ever says my name, just when he's mad. So if I hear "Lisa," I get nervous.
Q: What's something he wears that turns you on?
A: He can wear a ratty T-shirt, but it falls just right on his body. And walking shorts and a sweatshirt over his shoulders. No one wears a sweatshirt over their shoulders like he does. Oh my God.
Q: Weren't you friends with Conan O'Brien before the both of you got famous?
A: Yeah. A long time ago we did a sketch showcase thing at the Celebrity Center theater at the Church of Scientology. When we were rehearsing I'd see huge rats the size of dogs running across the rafters. Other than that, it wasn't very creepy there. The [Scientologists] weren't fierce proselytizers, and they let us use the space for free.
Q: You also did improv comedy with the Groundlings. What suggestions from the audience would you just dread?
A: It's always annoying when someone yells, "Proctologist!" It's like, All right, so you'll see me look up someone's ass one time, you'll laugh, and that's the end of the fabulous joke you supplied. Then when the director would ask the audience for an emotion they'd always shout, "Lusty!" That one always bugged me. I don't know why.
Q: Would it make you nervous if you had a friend in the audience?
A: Once I had a date come to the show. I hadn't had a date in a long time and the director yelled to the audience, "Tonight's kind of special because Lisa finally has a date, so let's give her a hand." Awful. My date must have been thinking, "What a loser."
Q: Well, did you do well?
A: No, so to top it off he must have been thinking, "Not only is she a loser, but she's a no-talent."
Q: You studied biology at Vassar for four years. What did you learn that has stayed with you?
A: The scientific method was a really important thing to learn because you're not allowed to judge your results, you have to just accept them for what they are even if they're not what you want. It was also great to learn the laws of nature, because I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but I did believe in an order of nature, a structured chaos. What's going to happen is what's going to happen and just let go. Give it up to a higher power that you can't control.
Q: You seem pretty smart. Would you ever go on a celebrity episode of Jeopardy!?
A: [Laughs] That's stress, not fun. I think they lighten the course load on Jeopardy! when it's celebrity week. They ask less things about the Mesopotamian civilization and more about things like TV. "Three prime-time networks have been around longer than the fourth one."
Q: Do you have any future film projects lined up? What about I Dream of Jeannie?
A: No, none. I feel so guilty. I read a script and hope it's going to suck so I won't feel badly about saying, "You know what? I'm busy having my baby."
Q: Do you have a favorite blonde joke?
A: There are two in a row that I love. Ready? What's the mating call of a blonde?
Q: I don't know.
A: "I'm so drunk." What's the mating call of an ugly, ugly blonde?
Q: I don't know.
A: "I said, 'I'm so drunk.'"
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Dennis Hensley interviewed Mimi Rogers for the April '98 issue of Movieline.