Lisa Kudrow grew angry with Friends live studio audience for “laughing too long”

This sounds like a storyline on "Hacks." (Probably because it was one: Deborah got irritated that people were laughing solely because they were "expected to laugh.") I concur with Kudrow.

And? Who cares?

The Friends audiences would wait for hours to get in and see the show. They were cheerleaded by staff to be responsive so they felt all that prep time obligated them to overlaugh and overreact. Regular Friends direct Peter Bonerz actually said this in a commentary section on The Bob Newhart Show DVD, comparing the appropriate and natural audience laughter and responses on that show and the over the top and sometimes unwarranted responses by Friends audiences.

I would be too if I was in her place. It's awkward for the players and awkward for the audience at home when an actor has to find a way to make a 30+ second pause seem natural in the middle of a joke. It takes you out of the moment, and it probably leads to a lot of actors losing their place when the laughter finally ends, so more unnecessary takes.

That's what I liked about How I Met Your Mother--they didn't film in front of a live audience, but instead recorded an audience laughing to the already filmed episode. Made for much more natural joke delivery and allowed for extended uninterrupted comedic monologues/sequences.

Fawlty Towers did their show right. They never paused for audience laughter to die down, they just kept going, and the audience had to keep up with the breakneck speed of how the story moved.

This often happens with successful long-running shows.

By the final season of the Big Bang theory any mildly amusing thing the characters said would illicit huge, unearned guffaws from the studio audience. And the show’s creator insisted a laugh track was not used.

I was watching reruns of Will & Grace and I’m convinced they were using a laugh track because the laughing and claps were so fucking obnoxious. None of what was happening was even that funny.

Give me a break. She was making a million dollars an episode. Suck it up.

None of them with the exception of Courtney Cox had any semblance of a career prior to this show. And yet, several of them have done nothing but gripe about it. It gives off major entitlement.

Hopefully, she sends Teri Garr some of that residual money, since she basically stole Teri's schtick.

It wasn’t not funny.

Why was R9's underwears coming down?

R10 Because her real world cast members pulled them down by accident.

Well, that's not very nice. A true friend never pulls down your underwears.

She always struck me as humorless.

I know what she’s referring to. You can hear a shift in the audience as the show grew more successful. The annoying SQUEEE girls who shrieked at every emotional moment annoyed me more than the laughter, though.

[quote]That's what I liked about How I Met Your Mother--they didn't film in front of a live audience, but instead recorded an audience laughing to the already filmed episode.

"Archie Bunker's Place was played before a studio audience for live responses".

The Friends audience wasn't as bad as the Married With Children in the later years, with the whooping and cat-calling, and whistles when Kelly would come on stage and bounce her tits. It was like they shared an audience with Morton Downey Jr.

Laugh tracks are the worst.

Perhaps this cunt should have joined the cast of Arliss and got off network tv.

She doesn’t need to complain about Friends anymore, because every moment of The Comeback showed just how much contempt she has for the show, and anything she says now is redundant.

And her performance as Valerie Cherish was genius.

R17 Yes and Alan Alda said if they didn't discontinue them on MASH he was quitting. It worked.

I hope after a while they were just doing it to piss her off.

Here’s the interview in question. She goes into more detail that isn’t quoted in the article.

For instance, she notes that were it a stage play, she’d have been fine with the long laughs, but ultimately it was a TV show made for a television audience, and to delay the pacing would just make editing trickier.

As well, she noted that they did so many takes that the crowd would eventually stop laughing, because they’d heard it all before. That made the writers go, “oh, it’s not working, let’s rewrite.” And Lisa would think, “no, it did work, they’ve just heard it too many times. And you’re just going to take the laugh track from the first take and splice it in, so why keep redoing it?”

That '70s Show's studio audiences also went a little over-the-top as its popularity grew. To their credit, the producers tried to curb it in some situations.

I was at the filming of the episode "The First Time" (when Eric & Donna had sex for the first time, mid-S2.) While the crew set up for the final/pivotal scene in Eric's bedroom, co-producer Linda Wallem addressed the audience & basically asked everyone to be cool/behave like adults during the next scene. Yes, laugh when appropriate.... but, NO cheering, hooting, or awwwwwwing, please.

Trying to act around the audience having a nervous breakdown over every must have been pretty annoying.

She's not an Aniston or Cox-level bitch, but she's definitely a bitch.

It's hard to imagine how much she suffered. And all just for a million dollars an episode!

Oh, I would just love a good cunt session with Lisa Kudrow. I feel like you wouldn't even have to get a full cocktail in her for her to spill. She was always too smart for that show and I think she always knew it. Fortunately she was also smart enough to appreciate what a sweet deal she had in it.

I'm telling you

Female Aspergers

Kudrow used to have a rep for being quite a cunt back in the day but she seems to have chilled out over time and is actually a decent human being nowadays.

Ingrate

What stories of cuntiness have you heard, R29? I'm not familiar.

Kudrow really is/was the most talented Friends cast member. And it's not even close.

She was said to be openly rude to guest cast members, especially female ones aka Elle MacPherson.

R33 I thought it was reported that ALL the principal cast members iced out guest stars. I've never once heard it was just Kudrow.

R8 Jennifer Anniston had a bigger career after the show than Courtney Cox did.

It was all of them R34 Lisa just made the mistake of saying something nasty to Elle that made a great talk show story.

—And I’m sure she’s now decided to disown all the fame and privileges that show and its audience’s laughter contributed to her “career,” right!? 🙄

[quote]She's not an Aniston or Cox-level bitch, but she's definitely a bitch.

Aniston is not known to be a bitch.

What I really hate is performative laughter, where a person does it to demonstrate her (usually her) superior intimacy with the artist or show.

R27 👏

I've never minded Kudrow, but that's a pretty cunty thing to say about the audience.

The Friends studio audience was ridiculous. As the seasons progressed, they would laugh hysterically just because a character said something emphatically. One of the examples that comes to mind is when Rachel says "you fell ASLEEP?" sarcastically. It's mildly amusing but the audience is laughing far too hard.

I've always got the impression Lisa Kudrow is quite hard-faced, even beyond the usual cliqueyness of the rest of the Friends cast. The officially story of why she was fired from Frasier was that she was playing Roz as too light and ethereal (i.e. like her future performance as Phoebe). It's certainly plausible, but I also wonder if she clashed with Kelsey Grammer behind the scenes. He almost had Jane Leeves removed from the show because he thought a British housekeeper was a cliché.

So then tell the producers to turn off the "APPLAUSE!" signs. Problem solved.

It’s kind of fun how these sitcom stars lose many days of their lives each year reliving bullshit from 25 years ago. Yes, they get money. They already have more money than they need. They are still expected to regurgitate on demand

They want a new deck, but the contractor has to know if Schwimmer’s internet dick pics are real .

Why do I feel like I get this same Friends thread regarding one of the cast members every 6 months and I’m talking before Perry died. Like sometimes identical sounding dialogue.

Lisa is s lovely girl but she really should wear makeup when she is being filmed in R22.

The audience was laughing too hard 🤣 oh dear god, I just can’t form a sentence

I have to laugh because Lisa was well known to break at the dumbest thing and made retakes necessary.

Her body language in that interview is very revealing. She has her arms crossed a lot of the time.

I think she knew it was fake laughing

R42 From what Peter Casey said, Leeves wasn’t almost fired, but Grammer was hesitant to cast her at all because he thought a British housekeeper would make the show too similar to “Nanny and the Professor,” which he loathed. He preferred the idea of Rosie Perez playing a Hispanic caretaker.

He changed his mind after reading with Leeves.

She sounds insufferable. It's a fucking sitcom.

I heard they had to keep an ambulance 🚑 outside because so many people were in danger of laughing to death

Elle MacPherson’s main talent was looking good in a bikini. She’s not an actress. Im not surprised the Friends cast iced her out.

Thursday Nights of the Laughing Dead

R54 Agreed. Elle's acting in Friends was painful to watch. She couldn't even convincingly play 'sexy', and she's a supermodel.

I never knew Friends was a comedy. I thought it was a documentary about assholes.

She was paid $1 million or so per episode, and she bitches about this? She can't "mute" audience if they laugh too long. Of course, she must control how and when to laugh. Well, she could be waiting tables, like other actors, who are more talented and worthy than she. The arrogance and entitlement is maddening.

R57 = Julia Roberts, Season 2 Guest Star.

R58 Table six needs their check, and table four needs a refill...

R49 Conan is Lisa’s ex

If the audience was laughing too long (!!), they needed better audience wranglers. Honestly, fuck Lisa Kudrow.

Who are those two that Conan has as assistants? They add nothing to the show.

Sitcom blondes taking it on the chin this week.

Kudrow hates when people are happy.

Was Joey supposed to be retarded? I never heard Skidrow complaining about all those cheap laughs??

Is Conan suggesting that he could have played Chandler better than Matthew Perry? Is that the subtext?

R67, No, I think the subtext is that Conan has carried a torch for Lisa for years and years after they briefly dated before they both became famous and he knew that his sense of humor is what she found attractive about him and when she told him Perry was so funny he was put out because HE was supposed to be the funny guy for her...

R68 This was also my impression. There was actually a Friends episode just like this. There's this new guy at Monica's job that she goes on and on to Chandler about how much he cracks her up and he gets super insecure about another man making her laugh because he's supposed to be "the funny guy" in her life. So she has to do everything she can to downplay the other funny guy to him so his masculinity isn't threatened.

Even after all these years, Conan is still defensively bringing up Lisa's calling him to tell him how funny Perry was, and she's still having to reassure him Perry was just "a different kind of funny". This isn't the first time I've seen him do it with her in interviews. It's kind of cute to see him still jealous/vulnerable about something so silly that happened so long ago.

How about no studio audience and "canned laughter"?

The audience should feel like a perfect arse for laughing too long and interfering with Lisa’s genius comic timing!

Rich white people problems.

Jennifer Aniston actually mentions this in her talk with Quinta Brunson around the 9:00 mark.