‘Friends’: Lisa Kudrow Says Her Struggle With Body Image Made Fittings ‘Not Fun’
Friends was one of the most popular shows of the 1990s. It has long been off the air, but Friends continues to entertain viewers with stories about a funny, interesting group of friends.
However, behind the scenes, things were not always positive for the cast members. Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay) has admitted that she dealt with body image issues on the set.
Lisa Kudrow was on ‘Friends’ for 10 years
Kudrow’s character, Phoebe, is one of the figures in the main group of friends on the show. Phoebe is a musician who endears viewers with her child-like personality.
Kudrow was on Friends from its premiere in 1994 to its finale in 2004. She and the cast members built a close friendship, much like their characters did. Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribiani) even once said Kudrow “worked harder on these relationships than she did on her marriage.”
Thanks to the enduring popularity of Friends, Kudrow still benefits financially from her work many years ago. She and the other cast members still make about $20 million a year just from reruns alone.
Lisa Kudrow struggled with body image issues on ‘Friends’
Although Kudrow has talked positively about her time on Friends, she has also been open about some more negative aspects. She dealt with her body insecurities, especially when she compared herself to costars Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green) and Courteney Cox (Monica Geller).
“It’s not that I felt horrible around them. Fittings were not fun, that’s for sure,” she recently shared on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, according to People. “Yeah, I have a different body type. I’m just bigger and sometimes the clothes, when I’d see the show, were so sort of full of volume … it was only this one moment where I hugged both of them but there was no sleeve. It was just like, I enveloped them. I felt like this mountainous thing that swallowed them alive.”
She previously talked about this topic in 2019 on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast as well.
Kudrow said at the time, “You see yourself on TV, and it’s that, ‘Oh my god, I’m just a mountain of a girl.’ And I’m already bigger than Courteney and Jennifer. [I was] taller, bigger. My bones feel bigger, I just felt like this mountain of a woman next to them.”
How Lisa Kudrow learned to accept her body
Many celebrities feel insecure given the number of people who openly criticize their looks. However, as Kudrow got older, she learned to accept her body the way it is.
Kudrow shared on WTF with Marc Maron that she tried to lose a lot of weight when acting on Friends, and the results were not always positive. She shared, “When I was too thin I was sick all the time, a cold, sinus infection, I was always sick.”
Nowadays, she has learned to be more kind to her body, even in the face of aging—something Hollywood often criticizes women for.
“I just go, ‘Alright, so what? You’re older, that’s a good thing, why is that a bad thing?’” she said.
