Lisa Kudrow

This interview originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2012 issue of World Screen.

 

The world fell in love with her as Phoebe Buffay on Friends. Now Lisa Kudrow is playing Fiona Wallice, the self-absorbed psychiatrist on Web Therapy, who doesn’t really have the patience to spend 50 minutes with her patients, so she comes up with the idea of a 3-minute therapy session via the Internet. The show, which started as online webisodes, now airs on Showtime.

 

WS: What served as inspiration for the show?

KUDROW: The fact that while people are at work on the Internet they are doing errands that they would otherwise have to do in person. I just thought it would be funny to take it to another level, and one of the things people would do on the Internet is therapy. What kind of a person thinks this is a good idea? We really got carried away! What kind of therapist thinks, “Oh, here is a service to offer”?

 

So Fiona is a very self-serving person, and we thought we’d have fun with that. She was in the finance world and she’s actually this greedy, selfish person who has no moral center. She’s married to a successful attorney who is running for office, so we see her in the middle of a campaign.

 

WS: And Fiona’s husband is in need of some therapy himself, and you got the fabulous Meryl Streep to try to fix him.

KUDROW: Fiona’s husband, Kip, is running for office, but there’s this little issue of him liking men. He’s not gay, he says. Nonetheless, the campaign backers would like him to go to this center where he can get treatment for his condition. If I were in another country that would be hilarious to me; only in America do they think you can pray away the gay! [Laughs]

 

So Meryl Streep plays the gay-conversion therapist, Camilla Bowner. And then we find out that she’s actually just trying to have sex with Fiona’s husband, “I’ll talk you out of it. I’m so good that this will change ya!”

 

WS: What kind of comedy do you like to do?

KUDROW: I like people who think they are pulling something off, but actually they’re not. I like people who think they are in control and they are not at all. Those are the jokes I like. It’s not that these people are dumb, they are dumb about this thing. What makes me and [Web Therapy co-creators] Don Roos and Dan Bucatinsky laugh is when someone thinks, “Well, it’s a good idea, of course everyone is going to want to do it, because I said so.” In politics nowadays, you have politicians who come on television, and a lot of them are women, and just because they say something ten times—and not answering the question—then it will be true. “It will be true if I say it with a great deal of authority!” I loved toying with that with Fiona—she just says things with a great deal of authority.

 

WS: How much of a learning experience was that whole ten years on Friends?

KUDROW: On so many levels, it was a huge learning experience. One of them was that playing Phoebe made me lighten up because she was so optimistic. I had played characters who were ditsy dumb and didn’t have a lot of information—that’s how I would describe Phoebe. She’s excited about things, and she doesn’t do anything halfway. She feels very strongly about a lot of things. And she gets really mad about a lot of things, too. She’d get pretty petulant and a little judgmental, which was funny because the way it came out of her was judgmental, but I learned a lot about lightening up playing her. That’s one of the things I am really grateful for, among the 50 other things I’m grateful for [laughs] that concern Friends!

 

Also, getting to spend that much time and being that close with five other actors for ten years—that’s a gift. On a lot of TV shows people don’t get along the whole time. We did in every way; we were like family, we were like our own union businesswise. That was an extraordinary thing.

 

WS: Did you have any singing talent before you played Phoebe?

KUDROW: I think I’m a little better than that! Phoebe was so much fun—just to play somebody who’s not very good but they think they are. I love that. I love when people don’t know how they are coming off. She thought she was this fantastic artsy folksinger! And she’s not. She doesn’t play that well, but that doesn’t matter!

 

WS: Phoebe and Fiona have something in common—Fiona thinks she is completely right and in control and she’s not.

KUDROW: That’s sort of my running theme. If I’m doing a comedic character that’s what I’m looking for. What’s the thing they think that they are really good at and they’re not? The audience will know and then we are all in on it, expect for the person.