Thanks to streaming, fans have been able to rewatch their favorite classics and discover new favorites. Friends, which is one of the best sitcoms of all time, is still being watched over and over again by fans even years after it ended. It’s hard to imagine someone these days not watching the show, streaming with an HBO Max subscription. Not surprisingly, Jennifer Aniston was pretty taken aback when she found out co-star Lisa Kudrow had never watched the NBC hit.
Aniston and Kudrow recently participated in Variety’s Actors on Actors segment, not only reflecting on their experience on Friends, but on their careers as a whole and how the show is still impacting their lives today. At one point, Aniston recalled her reaction when she found out that Kudrow had never actually watched Friends, and it’s definitely on par with how I reacted:
In 2020. Which feels like — boy, we’ve come a long way! And we’re all living amongst each other and back to being in the same rooms. You’d never watched Friends. And I actually remember thinking to myself, ‘Really? How could she never watch Friends?’ Except for when we would gather in the very, very beginning, back in the 1900s. We would watch the show at one of our homes.
Considering a lot of actors actually avoid watching their own projects for numerous reasons, it’s understandable why Kudrow hadn’t watched Friends. And it’s not like she was avoiding the show altogether, especially since it sounds like she and the cast watched it quite a lot back in the day. Kudrow and Aniston shared their own thoughts on watching the series, and how awkward it can be watching themselves:
- Kudrow: It was really fun. And then we got busy. There were whole episodes that I hadn’t seen. I just couldn’t sit there at home and have anybody walk by seeing me watching a show that I’m in. Because it felt embarrassing to me.
- Aniston: Just like, ‘Oh, here I am, watching my own self be brilliant and funny?’ Because you were.
- Kudrow: Well, I wouldn’t feel that way. Watching it, sometimes I would just be like [she affects a loud, reedy voice], ‘He’s her lobster!’ Why that voice?
Since she and Aniston last did Actors on Actors in 2020, Kudrow has watched more episodes of Friends than before. She previously revealed that she couldn’t watch the show for years, but things changed after Matthew Perry died in 2023 because she’d be watching it for him. It’s a sweet gesture that probably makes it a little harder to watch. However, it sounds like she’s gotten over being embarrassed to watch Friends since she’d be watching her late friend and co-star.
Kudrow has also shared some feelings she’s had while rewatching Friends, including the episode that made her emotional. In 2024, she admitted that she cried while watching Phoebe’s wedding to Paul Rudd’s Mike, noting how happy her character was and how she’d never seen her so happy. Earlier this year, Kudrow said it’s been comforting to watch Friends following Perry’s passing, and since Chandler Bing had some of the funniest lines, I can only imagine how much she both cried and laughed in the same breath while remembering him.
As someone who doesn’t particularly like hearing herself on a recording, I can sympathize with Kudrow and not wanting to watch herself. Of course, that has changed in recent years, especially since she’s putting more focus on Chandler, rather than Phoebe, because of Perry, but it’s all the same. With Kudrow rewatching the show, though, this does make me wonder if she’ll ever jump on the rewatch podcast train like a lot of her colleagues have been doing. You never know.
