It’s amusing that even though Friends aired its final episode on NBC more than 20 years ago, we’re still learning details about the inner workings of one of the best sitcoms of all time. For example, who would have guessed the cast went through a combined 75 wardrobe changes in the span of a half-hour? Well, Lisa Kudrow just spilled a little more tea, and it turns out Friends took quite a bit longer to shoot than other sitcoms at the time.
It’s a good thing Lisa Kudrow doesn’t mind recalling her days as Phoebe Buffay on Friends, because she’s been doing quite a bit of it lately as she promotes The Comeback Season 3 (both of which can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription). During an interview with the Table Manners podcast, she got into what a week in the life of a Friends star looked like, and when asked how long each episode took, she said:
A week. But you rehearse for a week, like a play. And then the audience comes, on the fifth day or fourth day, and you shoot it in front of the audience.
It was like a play in the way that they had plenty of rehearsal before giving their final performance to a live crowd; however, at the theater, nobody stops to retake a scene if Jennifer Aniston can’t stop laughing at Lisa Kudrow singing along with David Schwimmer’s bagpipes, or when Aniston accidentally answers a real call on her cellphone while filming.
Even more than that, sometimes scenes or jokes had to be rewritten, Lisa Kudrow said, if they didn’t go over with the live audience as intended. Kudrow continued:
It might not be funny enough, right? Or ‘let's see if we can improve on it.’ Not us, the writers. Normally a half-hour show took around two [or] two-and-a-half hours, maybe three to shoot. Ours was six or more hours. We had two audiences. We had an audience that was waiting outside to come in.
Yes, filming a Friends episode actually took so long that they had to replace the live audience halfway through. But before you go thinking that’s unfair to the fans who only get to see production of half an episode, Lisa Kudrow assured the hosts that after three hours, they were “happy to leave.” She said:
I think if someone — if they wanted to stay, they could. I don't know. But I know at some point they'd bring in pizza. We'd be going for so long they'd bring food in for them.
Maybe that’s where Ellen DeGeneres got the idea to order pizza for the Oscars audience. That’s really wild, when you think about it — the crew having to order food because they’ve kept the audience so long. You’re not going to get those laughs any easier if everybody’s tired and hungry.
Speaking of being tired, though, with Friends episodes taking two or three times longer to shoot than a typical 30-minute sitcom episode, that meant some long nights for the cast and crew. To add to that, Lisa Kudrow said:
Yeah, and I was pregnant during that, and I was tired. And we're shooting till 2 in the morning.
Too bad Central Perk wasn’t serving up real coffee!
While producing one sitcom episode per week isn’t unusual, I don’t think you’ll hear about many productions keeping their stars late into those a.m. hours. That couldn’t have been easy, but hopefully in hindsight they can see their hard work was worth it. They are still reportedly making 10 figures a year in royalties, after all.
Either way, Lisa Kudrow is still out here killing it in the comedy department on the third and final season of The Comeback, even managing to throw in some pretty meta Friends references. Keep your eye out for more as new episodes air at 10:30 p.m. ET Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
