Lisa Kudrow, known for portraying Phoebe Buffay in Friends, has explained why she was fired from the TV show Frasier after being cast as a main character. In 1993, a year before Kudrow was cast in Friends, she had won the role of Roz Doyle in Frasier, the spin-off of Cheers. However, Kudrow revealed to the SmartLess podcast that she was actually let go from the role before filming the pilot.
Kudrow described the moment as “devastating”. She went on to describe how director James Burrows told her during the episode’s run-through that things weren’t working. Kudrow said, “I was trying to like [ask], ‘What can I do?’” as she didn’t want to walk away from the part. She went on to say that the show “did make a casting mistake because I went to the network with Peri Gilpin”.
After being fired from Frasier, Kudrow won a role in Mad About You. After impressing producers, Kudrow was asked to audition for Friends. Kudrow went on to reveal that she was “the only cast member” who had to audition for the role in the show because she “had just gotten fired from Frasier.”
Kudrow played Phoebe in Friends for 10 seasons and eventually won an Emmy for her part in 2008. Gilpin played Roz in all 11 seasons of Frasier and returned to the show in last year’s reboot. The Frasier reboot will take Frasier back to Boston, the home of the Cheers bar and the setting for the beloved series
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