Exclusive Interview: Lisa Kudrow

August 23, 2012 World Screen Top Stories

PREMIUM: Lisa Kudrow, who the world first fell in love with as Phoebe Buffay on Friends, talks to World Screen about playing Dr. Fiona Wallice, the self-absorbed psychiatrist on Showtime’s Web Therapy.

 

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 and 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!” And then Fiona sets up a meeting at her house between Kip and Camilla’s husband, Trent, who is clearly gay! You can tell! After, when Fiona and Camilla are talking, Fiona says, “Your husband is so handsome and well groomed.” And Meryl says, “Yes, he takes a lot of care of his hygiene, his looks and his haberdashery.” [Laughs] I had a hard time not laughing!
 
WS: I was going to ask you that, since the show is mostly improv, how much harder is it stay in character?
KUDROW: Sometimes it’s really hard. Meryl really knocked me off balance but I was really trying to be [speaking as Fiona] “as professional as possible.” You can see a smile crack or all of a sudden [speaking as Fiona]  “I find that amusing. That’s very funny.” Meryl came up with so much stuff that it was genius. I had no response some times, because I was in awe. There is nothing she can’t do. And she gets the big picture in a way that only a director and a writer do, that’s why she is a phenomenal improviser. Anyone can improvise and you can get great moments, and it’s fantastic and fun, but when someone gets the entire big picture and every detail of the character and what it’s commenting on certain aspects of our culture, that’s when it’s great. I almost lost it when she said, “Well, as we all know, it took God six days to make the universe and 6,000 years to make an American, so it may take Kip six weeks to come around.” [Laughs] Yeah, that’s what a gay conversion therapist would say!
 
WS: Why did you initially decide to do Web Therapy as an online show?
KUDROW: We were approached by Lexus, which was starting a broadband channel. They asked if we had any ideas and we said we have this one idea, Lexus said, “Great, do it. You have complete creative control.” When someone tells you that it won’t cost you money and you have complete creative control, you don’t turn that down! We were all very excited about just two actors talking. We were excited about the possibility that that could be compelling enough to watch. This was never an idea for a TV show, but because the three of us, [Web Therapy co-creators Don Roos and Dan Bucatinsky] and I, are writers, when we come up with the three sessions per client or the three webisodes per guest star, there was an arc to them. And there was sort of an arc to each web season. And Gary Levine [the executive VP of original programming] at Showtime thought, this isn’t a web series, this is a TV show that’s on the web. We never thought that way, ever, but he’s smarter! When we started putting [the segments] together for the half-hour format, the narrative was so much clearer! Because when people watch online, they can watch one webisode, it’s self-contained, that’s fine, but they don’t necessarily watch them in order. But once [the webisodes are put] in a half-hour format, an order is given to you and there is a narrative to follow.
 
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 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 answer 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 from the very beginning, that she just says things with a great deal of authority.
 
WS: I have to ask you about Friends and Phoebe Buffay. 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 doesn’t have a lot of information but is really fine with everything. She’s excited about things, and she doesn’t do anything half way. 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: Phobe and Fiona have something in common because Fiona thinks she is completely right, completely in control and she’s not.
KUDROW: Yes, that’s true, 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—because the audience will know and then we are all in on it, expect for the person.