“I started getting nervous”: Lisa Kudrow Had To Convince a Stranger About Being in Friends To Get a Green Card
Lisa Kudrow is one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood, thanks to her performance as the iconic Phoebe Buffay in the NBC sitcom Friends, which was aired for ten seasons between 1994 and 2004. She was one of the six lead stars in the show, namely, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, and Courteney Cox.
Born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family, Lisa Kudrow wanted to become an expert on headache treatment like her father Lee Kudrow. In 1995, she got married to French advertising executive Michael Stern and has a son named Julian with him. During an interview, she recounted the hilarious story about trying to get a green card for her husband.
Lisa Kudrow Had a Hard Time Convincing Someone That She Is an Actress
Lisa Kudrow began her career in show business upon the insistence of comedian Jon Lovitz, her brother’s childhood friend. She became a member of an improv and sketch comedy school in Los Angeles, The Groundlings. She also worked with popular talk show host turned podcaster Conan O’Brien briefly in the improv troupe Unexpected Company.
Kudrow made appearances in numerous shows and even worked in at least two network pilots before landing her first recurring role as Ursula Buffay in the NBC sitcom Mad About You. Then came her Friends’ success and the rest as they say is history.
Despite being popular for her role as Phoebe Buffay, when Lisa Kudrow went to get a green card with her husband, she had to convince the guy that she was an actress. In an interview with Jay Leno (via Sassavy on YouTube), the actress recounted how this guy gave her the “hardest time”. She said: “He [the guy] wasn’t buying it and I started getting nervous.”
The guy refused to believe that Kudrow was an actress because she had not changed her name after marriage. So, he asked her if she was in anything that he would have seen. This was when she revealed that she played the role of Phoebe Buffay in Friends. The guy then recognized her and apologized for his behavior with her.
Lisa Kudrow Learned from Phoebe Buffay
To most people who watched Friends, it was more than just a popular sitcom. The show taught people a lot of things about friendship, love, and family. The viewers were not the only people who had learned from it, the actors also learned while starring in the show.
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014, Lisa Kudrow was asked how much of herself was there in the character Phoebe Buffay. She said:
“I merged the parts of me I could into that character but she taught me, she influenced me. I was much more sort of serious, uptight. She loosened me up!”
Kudrow also said that she gets overwhelmed when she thinks about how big of a mark Phoebe Buffay left on American pop culture. She said that she really enjoyed working with her castmates and even the show’s writer for 10 years. She thought of herself as really lucky that she got to do the show which everyone loved.
