(Credit: Netflix)

For many actors, landing a role in a successful sitcom can be a golden ticket to stardom. When the sitcom is as immensely popular as Friends, its stars are almost guaranteed to remain on television for years. However, being part of a long-running sitcom also has its downsides. For Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay in the iconic 1990s comedy Friends, the demands of the show’s audiences sometimes proved frustrating.

Like many American sitcoms of the era, Friends was largely filmed in front of a live studio audience at the Warner Bros Ranch in California – despite the programme being set in the heart of Manhattan, New York. Studio audiences have been commonplace within television comedy for decades due to their ability to provide real reactions and laughter to the show, as opposed to canned laughter and sound effects.

Reportedly, the studio tapings of Friends were a fairly jovial experience, with stand-up comedians employed to get the crowds going, and production staff often distributing free pizza and merchandise to the crowds. Given the all-encompassing phenomenon that Friends quickly became after its debut in 1994, it is easy to imagine the crowd’s excitement over seeing a live taping of the show and how hot tickets became. 

Nevertheless, some of the show’s stars often grew frustrated with the excitement of the studio audiences. During a recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, Lisa Kudrow remembered her annoyance with the studio audience: “Because they were laughing for too long. It wasn’t that funny.”

In fairness to Kudrow, it seems as though her issue was largely with the idea of a studio audience in general, rather than a disliking for the audience members themselves. “It wasn’t an honest response and it irritated me,” she shared, “Now you’re just ruining the timing of the rest of the show. There are other lines. 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,” the iconic comedy actor continued, “It is made for the TV viewers at home. That’s who we are in service to. If it was 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. It’s being filmed and now I’m just standing there … you do like nod, ‘Yeah, I said that.’ It’s terrible,” adding, “They instructed our audience not to do anything like that, I think.”

The fact that most live tapings of the show took upwards of eight hours to complete, and Kudrow was on the show for an entire decade probably did not help her short patience with the live audiences. However, in the years since the sitcom ended, the actor has certainly regained her appreciation for the people that made Friends such a success.