Lisa Kudrow Opens up About ‘Jarring’ Body Image Experience During ‘Friends’

Lisa Kudrow is opening up about her “jarring” experience with body image while filming Friends. The actress admitted she was taken off guard after first appearing on the popular sitcom alongside co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox during an August appearance on the Podcrushed podcast.

“I thought I was just really skinny. I can do whatever, [but] no, especially in high school. And I look at pictures and say, ‘Wow, pictures really distort reality,’” she said. “And it wasn’t until Friends that I realized, ‘Oh, I don’t look like I thought I looked.’” Kudrow, now 59, continued, “And that’s what was so jarring, and that’s when it was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to actually lose weight? I have to diet? Shoot.’”

Asked what triggered those thoughts in her, The Comeback star explained, “It was just seeing myself on the show and seeing myself in clothes and seeing Courteney and Jennifer in clothes.” Kudrow continued that she thought tailoring could be an issue, but when she went to a fitting with one of her co-stars, she realized that was not the root of what she was seeing. 

“That’s when I would see, ‘Oh, OK, it’s not just about tailoring…’ And I’m not trying to say I was overweight, either. I was not. I just had no idea the shape of my actual body,” she explained. As Kudrow has gotten older, she’s come to accept herself as she is. “I just realized, ‘Oh no – it’s OK. This is just what I look like. That’s OK. Do what you need to do to be healthy but this is your body and it’s OK,’” she explained.

Kudrow reunited with her Friends co-stars Aniston, Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer for an HBO Max reunion that aired in May 2021. It was an emotional experience for all the cast members, and Aniston recalled walking off the set in a December 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I think we were just so naive walking into it, thinking, ‘How fun is this going to be? They’re putting the sets back together, exactly as they were,’” Aniston said. “Then you get there and it’s like, ‘Oh right, I hadn’t thought about what was going on the last time I was actually here.’”

“And it just took me by surprise because it was like, ‘Hi, past, remember me? Remember how that sucked? You thought everything was in front of you and life was going to be just gorgeous and then you went through maybe the hardest time in your life?’” the Emmy winner continued. “Of course, you’ve got cameras everywhere and I’m already a little emotionally accessible, I guess you could say, so I had to walk out at certain points. I don’t know how they cut around it.”