Lisa Kudrow has “zero complaints” about her time on Friends, but she will refuse one request from fans: singing Phoebe Buffay’s hit song “Smelly Cat.”
The 63-year-old actress opened up about her relationship to the hit NBC sitcom and its fans on a new episode of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley. Mosley questioned Kudrow about how she feels about being “constantly” referenced as Phoebe decades after the series ended.
“Listen, my first response is always, I have zero complaints,” she answered. “Every part of it...Just the relationship with the other actors, we had fun. That is so rare. And real honest respect, mutual respect.”
“It was a really good relationship that took some work, and we did the work. It was great,” she said, adding that the cast spent all their “downtime” together on set.
But she revealed her exception to the experience. “Sometimes people will stop me and say, ‘Oh, sing Smelly Cat!’ I don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to do that.”
Phoebe Buffay, Kudrow’s character, was the most eccentric and carefree of the six friends. One of her most distinctive characterizations was her recurrent gig playing guitar and singing her self-written songs at the coffee house. The most famous of these numbers is “Smelly Cat,” a jingle Friends fans still recognize and recite today.
Kudrow has publicly performed the legendary tune since the show ended. In 2015, she sang “Smelly Cat” on stage with billionaire artist Taylor Swift during Swift’s 1989 World Tour in Los Angeles. Swift and Kudrow sang the song while strumming their guitars to a raucous audience who joined in with the lyrics.
Before that, Kudrow sang the iconic song at the “Rock A Little Feed A Lot” Benefit Concert in Los Angeles in 2009, joined by her co-star Courtney Cox.
But the ’90s sitcom star seems to have moved on. Now starring in the widely acclaimed HBO series The Comeback, Kudrow is a star contender for this year’s Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
Kudrow previously won the accolade in 1998 for her role as Phoebe. Just weeks ago, the actress revealed that she originally wanted to play Rachel Green, a role that went to her co-star Jennifer Aniston.
