Fresh Air - Best Of: Jason Segel / Lisa Kudrow

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

Jason Segel returns to talk with Terry Gross about his Emmy-nominated series Shrinking, in which he plays a therapist who suffered a nervous breakdown in the wake of his wife’s death. Segel opens up about his own therapy and acting opposite Harrison Ford. Also, Lisa Kudrow talks about her Emmy-nominated series The Comeback. She plays an actress who is delusional about her career and desperate to be onscreen. Kudrow spoke with Tonya Mosley about shifts in Hollywood, Friends, and what she was like when she was a young girl. Book critic Maureen Corrigan recommends three new suspense novels. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Jason Siegel. In the comedy drama series shrinking, he plays a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown, but is continuing to see patients. Siegel talks about what he's learned about psychotherapy and himself playing a therapist. Also, Lisa Kudrow. She's nominated for two Emmy Awards for the final season of the HBO Comedy The Comeback, which she co-created. Lisa is best known as Phoebe on Friends, but long before that, she was performing as a kid for the people around her.

I imitated Lily Tomlin, Edith Ann, that character on Laughing. I'd go to slumber parties, and to me it was like doing a show, and then lip-sync songs, and then have everyone do it. I was like a cruise director. And book critic Marine Corrigan

has a late summer gift for us three new suspense novels. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. Here she is. My guest Jason Siegel is nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series Shrinking. The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV. When we first meet his character, Jimmy, he's a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown, but continues to work with his patients. Believing he's having a breakthrough as a therapist, he intervenes in his patient's lives. He gives them inappropriate advice to do things Jim believes will change their lives for the better and prevent them from complaining about the same

things week after week without ever making an effort to fix the problems. The reason Jimmy is falling apart is that his wife was killed in a car accident a year ago. His teenage daughter is in high school when the series starts. She accuses him of being so absorbed in his own grief. He's emotionally abandoned her instead of helping her through her grief. Jimmy's mentor and colleague is played by Harrison Ford, who's also nominated for an Emmy, as is co-star Jessica Williams. Siegel got his first memorable role in freaks and geeks. The characters were high school friends. After this show was canceled,

Siegel wrote and starred in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He wrote and was the human star of the movie musical The Muppets. He was one of the stars of How I Met Your Mother, played writer David Foster Wallace in the film The End of the Tour, and wrote and starred in the series Dispatches from Elsewhere. Let's start with a scene from the first episode of shrinking. It will give you an idea of how Siegel's character has lost his bearings as a therapist and is pushing his patients to do what he thinks they need to do to move forward.

Here he is with his patient Grace, played by Heidi Gardner. You just kept on and on about how dumb I am. You're not dumb, Grace. He said if it weren't for my great s' no one would want to take care of me. So that's almost nice. It's not nice. I know, but... He loves me.

Good enough. Grace, we've been doing this for two years. Two years of your life. I have never seen a guy. Tell a woman that she is dumb, and lucky she has great d'ffes and thought to myself, wow, they must really be in love. And he keeps telling me how great he is.

Well, I saw him. He's not that great. His muscles are too big. His shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that. It's gross. I am sorry. I don't know what's happening because I was talking and...

Grace, your husband is emotionally abusive. He's not working on it. He doesn't intend. to. He's made you think it's all you deserve. It's not. Leave him. It's not that easy. It is that easy. You don't have any kids. Just go to your sisters in Vancouver. But then...

Leave him or I'm done being your therapist. Okay. Okay. Okay. Jason Siegel, welcome back to Fresh Air and congratulations on the Emmy nomination and on the series. So I should say the outcome does not go well. Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. It's good to talk to you again, by the way. I was saying to you in our little pre-interview session, you're one of my very first interviews when I was a little guy,

I mean, on my early 20s, and it's so nice to be talking to you again. Oh, it's a pleasure to have you back. We also talked about the Muppets movie, and that was a lot of fun. Yeah, that's right. Love that film. First of all, what should Jimmy have done? What do you think? Well, it's an interesting thing,

because this is the extreme example of this kind of thing, therapy method that the show is based on this group of therapists who kind of broke convention and realized that people were spending a lot of time week after week rehashing where things came from in their past. And in reality, what they really needed was some hope about what to do on Tuesday. You know, it's like I have to have this talk with my boss on Tuesday and I have all feelings about it and you're spending week after week figuring out why you have feelings about authority figures, but Tuesday is coming, you know? And so this group of therapists decided that they were going to kind of change the rules a bit, tell people what to do on Tuesday, and then

in the meantime, we will get to figuring out why you had such a hard time figuring it out. And so this is the beginning of that approach to therapy that we see, you know, as the show progresses, of, you know, people really just want to be told what to do to some extent. We can figure out the why of it all, but what am I supposed to do about my abusive husband? What am I supposed to do about, you know, my work situation? Who are these therapists that you're talking about? One of them is Phil Stutz, who there is a documentary about, and he has a whole web of people that, you know, that he trained and works with a big group of therapists who all have this same idea that what people really want is some hope.

And if you can send a patient out of the room with some hope and some direction, they're much more likely to come back and they're much more likely to affect change in their life. Did you participate in that kind of therapy? Listen, one of these guys has become my actual therapist, and it totally changed my life. He's absolutely incredible. And I had done therapy throughout my life. And like they said, I had spent a lot of time talking. about the same stuff for my childhood or this or that, and to finally be given some direction

about, hey, next time this happens, this is what I want you to do. Sometimes as reductive as like, I want you to say this sentence next time this person does this. And all of a sudden, your life starts operating more smoothly. And then you start to pick up the why of it all. And as a matter of fact, the last lines of this season that we just, you know, finished that aired season three, Jimmy finally gets to the dirty underneath of why he can't move forward, this idea of who would want me now. You know, I'm all covered in scars. That came from a real therapy session I had with Barry, where I had to show up to this thing, where I was going to be around somebody who I had kind of come up with.

And I've had a twisty-turning life and some rocky moments. And this guy I was going to see it had just worn it all a lot more lightly than I had. And I was talking to my therapist Barry about it. And I said, you know, I think I feel a little bit embarrassed. I feel embarrassed to walk into this room. And he has worn it all so lightly. And I'm showing up covered in scars. And without missing a beat, he said,

what a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old, not covered in scars. Isn't that what Harrison Ford says? I got off the phone with my therapist. I called the writer's room and I said, guys, this is how this is how this ends. That's so interesting. Yeah. That moment released so much personal, whatever you would call it,

shame, embarrassment about that I've lived a complicated life. And the beauty of doing shrinking is when people come up to you, it's not like I love this joke or I love the Dracula puppet musical, these are all things that I'm really proud of. But people come up for shrinking and they say, hey, I was going through X, Y, Z. And something that you guys talked about on there really helped me. I've had a lot of people come up and say, like, that thing about scars really stuck with me. It's a sign of a life fully lived, you know?

No, absolutely. That stuck with me, too. I've heard you say that at least when you were younger, and I don't know how it is now, you had trouble making decisions. And I'm wondering if that relates to how much you like this form of therapy where somebody suggests what you should do. One of the things that I've come to realize getting to know myself for this long is I seem to have like the wrong-sized computer for my needs. You know, it's like it's just crunching numbers and scenarios instead of letting me settle in and enjoy my life. And it's been that way since I'm really young. I was a kind of emo emotional kid and every decision felt so weighty.

And I think that it has been very beneficial to my work because I seem to feel things like 1.5 times the normal amount. But it has been kind of stifling in my personal life. And so, yes, I think having somebody simplify the equation has been a really helpful thing. I will say, like, and I have throughout my past been kind of hesitant to talk about like personal life stuff, but I'm getting married this year. And my fiance does a very, thank you so much. My fiance does a very similar thing for me. She is a dancer and she kind of lives in her body and is a very grounding force that I have been needing in my life of someone who just says, hey, I know you're thinking a lot right now. But you know our life is great, right?

And I don't have that voice. That voice does not, like, live in me. And so that's also been really helpful for kind of calming me down a bit. You know, with decision making, did you and do you always think that, you know, you can see both sides. This decision would be better than that decision, so it's hard to decide which is best. But you're sure there's going to be consequences if you're. make the wrong choice. Yeah, I wish it was more rational than it is. I think it's honestly, I think it's like a close cousin to OCD. I think that it's like the actual stuff is a little bit of

a mask. You know what I mean? I'm like fooling myself if I think any of this obsession or worrying is about anything real. But you know, it's as simple as like, oh, you know what? If I'm worrying about the property line right now, life must actually be in pretty good shape. You know what I mean? It's learning that kind of stuff. Do you actually have OCD? Were you diagnosed with that? Yeah.

And it manifested in a bunch of different ways. But, like, you know, when I was young, really, really young, it was night terrors that turned into, like, compulsively checking doorknobs. And I've found a lot of ways to channel it into creativity. Creativity has been a really good friend. I mean, it's been my beloved since I'm young until I met my partner, like, me and creativity were right or die. Jason Siegel speaking with Terry Gross.

He's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series Shrinking. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Jason Siegel. He's nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the comedy drama series Shrinking. as a psychotherapist who's having his own mental health crisis after his wife dies in a car crash. I want to get back to the kind of therapy that inspired the kind of therapy or character is practicing in the series of intervening in people's lives and telling them what they should do as opposed to trying to like gently lead them to question themselves and discover a solution for themselves.

Has the series been controversial among therapists for suggesting that that approach could be a very helpful approach as well as it could be a destructive approach? All I can tell, I don't read the Internet at all. I'm scared of the Internet. I thought you might know therapists who are telling you directly. Well, all I will tell you is that the therapists who have come up to me about it have almost unanimously said, that it is wish fulfillment for therapists. Because the experiences, for them, you are sitting there knowing exactly what the answer is. And week after week, you are trying to use, like, the Socratic method to, like, guide them to what to you is a very obvious decision, you know?

And it's kind of funny because in real life, your friends who are the least qualified are the most eager to tell you what to do. and your therapist, who is the most qualified, feels the least enabled to tell you what to do. And so I think that therapists love the idea of being able to just say, like, oh, my God, just leave him. Just leave him, you know? How is the serious pitch to you? And it was your idea, apparently, to add this kind of therapy? No, not really. It was Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence came to me.

They had both had similar ideas about a therapist. We should mention that they are the creators of Ted Lassau. I think Bill and Jason Siddakas are the creators of the Lassau. Brett is a writer on it. And then Bill, Brett, and I are the creators of shrinking. The reality is I kind of got a great free ride on it. Bill and Brett had thought of these therapy ideas. Okay.

And they didn't have a script yet, but they each had this idea about a therapy. going through a nervous breakdown. And they pitched me the idea. And I think my contribution to it was what you had brought up, which is I feel like I have garnered a lot of goodwill over my career. And people are rooting for the characters I play. Let's push this guy as far as we can into the red because I feel like I can pull him out of the nosedive. So let's be brave.

And, you know, so in the opening, I think it's the opening scene of the show. I'm in my backyard with sex workers and booze and drugs and my daughter is upstairs. Like it is a pretty unlikable first depiction, you know? Because I felt like if you start this guy at the rockiest of rock bottoms, you have a long way to go to pull him out. And I just believed I could make you feel sympathetic for him. So then we jumped in and we wrote the pilot and made the show and that's history. The second truth to how it happened, allegedly, is I have a place in a town called Ohai, a little country town. And I love it there.

And I walk around town like Big Bird in Ohio. I wake up every morning and I take this 45-minute walk through town that's kind of like the beginning of beauty and the beast. I'm like waving at the baker and the shops are opening. And I just love it. I feel very much like myself. apparently what really happened is one of the producers was on vacation in Ohio. And I was taking one of these Muppety walks through town. And he saw me from across the street and texted Bill Lawrence.

I just saw Jason Siegel. He seems like a happy guy. Let's make a show with him. And here we are. So we've heard you with a picture. patient in a scene from the series. And now I want to play a scene with you talking to your mentor, Paul, who is considerably older than you are.

He's played by Harrison Ford. Paul in the series gets diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his series, his symptoms progress through the series. And you've been really helpful to him as his symptoms have progressed. You've been there for him. But at this point in the series, Paul, Harrison-Barrison. Ford's character is leaving L.A. and moving to Connecticut to be close to his daughter, who he'd been estranged from in the past, but the relationship has started up again. He owns the

building where he practiced along with you and along with Jessica Williams, whose character Gabby he gave the building and the practice to because it was her dream to set up a trauma center. So now she's going to be able to do that. And he knew from the past that you didn't want. to take over the whole practice. But you feel betrayed because he didn't consult you before giving it to Gabby. And you found out late that he was moving 3,000 miles away. So you're feeling very abandoned. Oh, man, I know what you're about to play.

I haven't watched this scene since I did it. Why were you afraid to? No, quite the opposite. This scene with Harrison that you're about to play, I knew was coming for the whole. whole season, you know, because I get to kind of know the storylines in advance. And I think the whole season, I was thinking to myself, boy, when we get to the end of this season, I'm going to be on a balcony with Harrison Ford acting my guts out, you know? And it's really important to me that I've, be great. You know, it's like you're going to play basketball with Michael Jordan or something. And

man, when that scene came, I was not afraid, and I just was honest. I didn't show off, and I did all the things that I feel like make a scene good. And at the end, when they said, cut, Harrison looked at me, and he said, so excited, you did it, kid. And we hugged. And I didn't need to. add any other like uh judgment to that moment does that make sense sure and he calls you kid in the series too yeah yeah now he's he's become a really special part of my life but yeah let's hear it i haven't heard it before okay and to set it up just a little further the subtext of this is that jimmy always felt like hurt by his own father and emotionally abandoned because his father was always like disappearing on him. And now Jimmy's father is going to go on a fishing trip instead of

going to Jimmy's daughter's graduation. And Jimmy's really angry with his father for now emotionally abandoning his daughter. At least that's how Jimmy sees it. So here, here you are as Jimmy with Harrison Ford as your mentor and fellow therapist, Paul. You speak first. You gave the practice to Gabby. We talked about this years ago. You said you hated paperwork, and all you wanted to do was spend time with the patience.

People changed. You didn't even check with me, Paul. Would you have wanted it? No. So you're angry with me for not offering you something that you don't want. Yes, I am. I'm supposed to be your guy. Been your guy. And this, this is how you treat me?

I don't deserve it. Easy kid. No, I'm mad, Paul! And I'm embarrassed. I have to find out for a Meg that you're moving. You don't even have the decency to come and look me in my eyes and tell me that you're leaving me. Let's take a break. I think these feelings that you're having might be meant for someone else.

I think they're meant for both of you. I get it now. I'm not as important to you as you are to me. I just feel stupid. It took me that long to realize it. So how does the scene sound to you actually hearing it now? I don't want to put you on the spot and feel like you have to brag about your performance. No, no. Luckily, that's not how I feel. Okay.

I always feel vulnerable when I hear or watch myself acting because I think, like, the feeling you're feeling, if you're doing it right, is so vital that, then the, um, it translating to the outside part of you, always like by the clumsy act of expression is going to be like one step less, um, vital. But I feel, I feel like I, I feel like I sound like how people sound when they're feeling those things, you know? Sounds like you're choking. Yeah. I try really hard. I, I think that this like might be the key to acting. I don't know. But I try really hard not to show off. I think that's one of the things that you learn as you're getting more familiar with working with a camera.

Boy, you want to show off. Like the camera's getting ever closer to you as the coverage goes on, you know? So some parts of you are activating like, oh, gosh, it's my turn, you know? Or, oh, it's getting closer. Now's the time to really show them, you know? And so I think a big thing that I try to do is to be, oh, you know what? This may be an easy way to say it. I was really interested in why I thought Jeff Bridges was so good at acting. So I went back and I read reviews of some of his great performances. And one of them said, Jeff Bridges may be the least self-conscious actor working today.

And I thought, oh yeah, that's the goal, is to be as unselfconscious between. action and cut as possible. Like, just, just don't show off. Don't try to, don't try to show them. Just be really, how honest can you be between action and cut, you know? And then you start adding, like, taking it for a spin while you're out there, and that requires some bravery and all that. But, um, I guess during that scene, but with Harrison between action and cut, I just tried to really know what I was feeling.

I understand when people talk about acting, like I might call myself the character, like understand what Jimmy was feeling. That's not really my experience of doing acting. I'm like, what am I feeling right now, you know? I don't have to search, like, what is Jimmy feeling? What am I feeling? And then just like, just do that.

Jason Siegel, it's been great to talk with you again. I really appreciate you coming back to the show. And congratulations on your Emmy nomination. Terry, thanks so much. It's so nice to both of us still be at it after all these years. It's pretty darn cool. Jason Siegel is nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the comedy drama series shrinking. He spoke with Terry Gross. Summer days are dwindling down to a precious view. So our book critic, Maureen Corrigan is scooping up some of the season's most interesting suspense fiction. Here's her review. It's the end of summer. So let's grab what escaped. we can, which for me means reading suspense fiction. Six years ago, I stopped eating mushrooms.

The cause was Sylvia Moreno Garcia's horror novel, Mexican Gothic, in which fungi become frightful. Moreno Garcia, who excels at playing around with genre fiction, recently brought out a noir novel set in 1940s Mexico. Called the intrigue, it's so stylishly evil, it begs for a movie version, in black and white, of course. The plot is a classic one in which a predator risks becoming a patsy. A con artist named Ulysses makes his money by placing ads in the lonely heart sections of magazines and waiting to see if any rich widows or spinsters respond. When Perla in Clan, the owner of a mansion-turned-boarding house in the port of Veracruz invites Ulysses to visit, he thinks he's in clover, but trouble awaits in the form of Perla's

niece. Inez rightly wonders what a man who bears a resemblance to a move, star like Tyrone Power is doing courting her grim aunt. Moreover, Inez desperately wants out from under her aunt's thumb. Who could blame her? Here's a snippet of a scene where Perla announces to friends that she's chaperoning Inez to a dance. I will escort her, Perilla said firmly. my father always told us ladies from good families are like delicate flowers, which must be carefully pressed inside a good book, and I agree with him. Inez's hand wrapped around a fork, her fingers squeezing it tight, she wished she could stab her aunt with it, a carefully pressed flower, she thought, a dead thing.

The double and triple crosses, as well as the body count, mount in the intrigue, which subverted all my guesses about who would be left standing at the end. This summer, Richard Russo brought out his first crime thriller, originally written as a TV script, Under the Falls is set in upstate New York in a place called Stone Mountain. The plot, like that of the movie, of Moreno Garcia's novel is indebted to noir, where the past is never really past. Tyler Sinclair hasn't been back to Stone Mountain since he ran off from an abusive father

and romantic complications at 18. Now, 18 years later, he's returning as a big-shot country rock singer. The occasion is a fundraiser for one of Tyler's old friends. nicknamed Doc, who was paralyzed in a diving accident when they were all teenagers. But as Doc now informs Tyler, not everybody in the mountain is a Tyler Sinclair fan. It's not just that you made all that money, Doc explains. It's that you made it writing songs about us, about our lives. Where's our cut is how they look at it. The benefit concert ends in multiple deaths, prompting Tyler and others to excavate his hometown's secrets.

Beyond the crime plot, though, Rousseau excels here at what he's long excelled at, namely, chronicling the world of working-class America and the limited opportunities for those in places like Stone Mountain. George Pelicanos started writing his crime series starring African-American private investigator Derek Strange in 2001. In the intervening years, Pelicanos has written for series like The Wire and Trame, but he's always kept intermittent faith with Strange. 14 years after his last outing, an older but still streetwise strange returns in the blue flame, investigating two murders that have struck within a once-tight group of friends. It's been long enough that I can repeat a cliche about Pelicanos, namely that he does for Washington, D.C. what Chandler did for L.A.

Strange takes us into the D.C. The tourists and politicians don't know. From neat rowhouse neighborhoods to the D.C. central detention facility. The title, the Blue Flame, refers to the fact that Strange, an ex-cop, still has that burning cop curiosity. I hope it's never extinguished. Marine Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. Coming up, Lisa Kudrow talks about her HBO show The Comeback and why she recently binged friends for the first time.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Before my guest, Lisa Kudrow was famous. Back when she was doing improv, she created a character, an actress determined to stay in show business no matter what it cost her. That character eventually became Valerie Cherish, the relentlessly optimistic actress who has been chasing her comeback since 2005. Kudrow developed Valerie for HBO with writer and director Michael Patrick King,

building a character who wants to be back on television so badly that she will endure almost anything, demotions, humiliations, and writers half her age who barely hide what they think of her. Now in the show's final season, Valerie finally gets what she has been chasing, the lead in a network sitcom. catch, AI is writing the scripts. The role has Kudrow up for two Emmys this year, one for acting and one for writing. It's the latest chapter in a career that includes 10 seasons as Phoebe on Friends, whose finale drew more than 50 million viewers. She won her first Emmy for that role in 1998. Her credits run long, so here are just a few. Web therapy, the improvised comedy she co-created, playing a therapist

who conducts very short sessions online. Who do you think you are? the genealogy series she executive produced for 11 seasons, and Romney and Michelle's high school reunion, a sequel announced earlier this summer. And Lisa Kudrow, welcome back to fresh air. Hi, thank you. Nice to be back. I want to play a clip from this third season.

In this scene, Valerie has finally gotten the network sitcom. She's always won it. And she's the lead. And the show is called How's That? And the secret has just come out, though, that her fellow cast members are learning that the writers on the show are actually AI. And the reactions vary. So here you are with the actors, who are your castmates, Tim Bagley, Brittany O'Grady,

Barry Henley, Zane Phillips, and Matt Cook, who speaks first. Let's listen. Come on, everyone. Everyone hates AI. I didn't sign up to be on an AI written show. Yeah, should we be calling our agents? Please don't. Please don't. You know, if this gets out and studio doesn't want it to, then I don't know, they could pull the plug on the whole thing.

No. This information is top secret and even had to sign an NDA. Sure, what's the big deal? You can't do a show without writers. And we're not. We have Al. Al is AI, though. Al's a bot? Yeah. Well.

Is that why no one would ever give me his contact information? Well, OK, guys, listen. OK. We're the first, and the show's tested well. So I think we just take the material that you are given, bought or not, funny or not funny, and do everything you can to make it great. All right?

We're actors. That's what we do, right? That's right. It's our job to make things funnier. Uh-huh. But a lot of times when I do that, the writers get angry. if I change a word.

So many times I've made the writing so much better than it was. I've been told that. And then I have to go back and do the words the way that they wrote it, and the audience doesn't laugh. And they look at me like, I'm not funny. I knew the joke wasn't funny the whole week, but I can't say that, right? Right.

It's like when they give me a line that's not funny, they say, Gabrielle, do it sexier. That's probably why it's been so fun here. It turns out there are no writers. It's just us. Yeah. I've been enjoying this. Yeah.

You know, I don't think I ever liked a writer. Oh, I love that scene so much. I know. You know, it's so funny. It's like this show is just as much about the writers as it is about Valerie. Very much. Yes. But what I love about that scene is just like the anatomy of a mob.

You know, that it starts with, What? It's AI. You lied to us? This is a betrayal. We're doing this without writers. That's not right. And then once it's like, well, if you say something, they might take the whole thing away. Oh, no. I don't want that. And then, you know, yeah, you know what? I don't like writers. And it's just like complete 180. That's what human beings do, I think. You're the youngest of three siblings. You grew up in a suburb of L.A., the San Fernando Valley, Tarzana. What was your place in the house? My place? Yeah.

As the youngest, usually like the least competent person, right? I mean, that's the way it is. I'm the youngest by six and eight years, you know? So I was sort of an only child at times because they're out and away. And it's the 70s also, so it was different, right? It was, yeah, you'll be fine. All right. I can do whatever you want.

I ate, you know, baked M&Ms and Doritos for breakfast on the weekends. And that was great. Conan O'Brien, who's your longtime friend, you all met very early in your careers when you were just starting out here in Los Angeles. He said when you were on his show, he described you as, quote, someone with a Victorian sense of morality. which I thought was a really interesting way to describe somewhat. And accurate. Well, first off, what does that mean? You know, yes, I was very much like that.

And still, is that what he was saying? Maybe. But that felt like the safest way to be. Did you ever have a Wild Street growing up? No. No. No. You were pretty straight-laced all the way through.

I think so. But, you know, I was funny, but not a class clown because they were annoying. They got in the way of the lessons during the day. Right. And your morality was like, we need to be good students, quiet in class. Yes, I like structure. Yep. So you would make people laugh, but you weren't the class clown.

What kind of things would you do to make folks laugh? Do you remember? Yeah, I imitated Lily Tomlin, Edith Ann, that character on laughing. I'd go to slumber parties, and to me it was like doing a show. I would lip sync songs and then have everyone do it. And I was like a cruise director. Is that where the seed came for you and acting? When did you really understand that I like this, this attention?

Well, maybe it was attention because I was the youngest or I don't know. But it made people happy and engaged. And we were all doing something together. And I mean, my family was fun. My dad's hilarious. My brother and sister were really funny. So I would take their material, which was, you know, too mature for anyone else my age, but that made me kind of something. But it was so great to make people laugh. That was the best thing ever. You have talked a lot over the years about your dad and his work. He studied cluster headaches, and he founded the first private headache clinic. in the western part of the United States. A lot of what he found it back then

is still part of standard treatment today. But when you were a little girl, did you have an understanding of it from the start? Yeah, he was an internist, and then in 1971, he switched to just treating and researching headache. So I was eight. So, yeah, I was old enough to understand what he was doing.

And as I got older also, you know, because he lectured. all over the world about headache. And so he would write his lecture and do it to me because he wanted to make sure it was all understandable. So I'm maybe like 13, 15, you know, I don't remember how old. He proposed a hypothesis for, you know, the potential mechanism of cluster headache. And so he wanted to make sure I could fully understand it.

Because if you understood it, then a crowd of folks. Then neurologists will definitely understand it. And I remember him saying to me, you have to understand that right now, you are one of the few people on the planet who understands more about headache from listening to all my talks than a lot of doctors. You went on to Vassar, studied biology, initially. thought you were going to be a doctor. Right. But you still had this little bit of something in you that loved acting that felt like you still wanted to kind of do that thing. But you still graduated with a degree in biology. Yeah, I didn't still love acting. Oh, you didn't? In college. High school and college, it was absolutely never. Oh, why did that change for you? Because I thought, all right,

now you have to be an adult. Like, that's a fun thing. But that's, you know, I've seen. actors on TV and, you know, I've heard about all their divorces. Do you know? And I thought, mm-mm, that's not the adult you want to be. Okay. And in college, I just, I fell in love with biology and thought, yeah, yeah, I want to be a doctor. What changed? What changed was after I graduated a couple things. I mean, there's a weird thing that I can't explain. You know, I'd come home on break and be driving around L.A. And I'd hear, you know, a commercial for a sitcom. And it just sounded like, well, that's a horse of a different collar.

Like, it's so broad and it's not funny. But there's a laugh track. And I'd think, oh, that's pushing it. So, they're hitting it so hard. And then, oh, why don't they throw it away? Lisa, remember to throw it away when you do it. That was just a thought that would come in your mind. It would come in my mind.

And I think, wait, why do I have to do that? That's not what I'm going to be doing. And the big motivation also. My brother's best friend is John Levitts. I grew up with John Levitts. I graduate from college. He gets on Saturday Night Live. And, oh, it's not just this thing that happens to a magic few.

And then I'm really feeling very strongly, you better do this now. You're only 22. And you have no responsibility. I imagine a pretty selfish endeavor to pursue acting, and now's the time and don't have any regrets later. I want to transition to friends with the few moments I have left with you. I'm sorry about the loss of Matthew Perry. Thanks, yeah. I know that you, for lots of different reasons, didn't watch the show.

You started watching it after he passed away. Yeah, because it was. too much about me before. I didn't want to watch me. And then after Matthew passed away, there were so many, well, there's always a marathon anyway. So luckily, there was a marathon to watch. And I was so happy to see Matthew then and so funny. And it was, yeah, it was a great way to sort of process him not being here and then really enjoyed how much he made me laugh and then how much everybody made me laugh and even myself. Yeah, what did you notice about yourself?

That sometimes, yeah, it was funny. Sometimes. Oh, my gosh. That's good. No, but I mean, okay, for the most part, I enjoyed what I did. And then there were times where it's like, well, I mean, that you should. Have your license taken away. You know, that's not.

Don't do that. What are you doing? Anything in particular that made you cringe. He's her lobster. I have it. Locked, loaded. It's ready to go. E.

Playing with a voice. Yeah. Uh-uh. What about you singing, you know? What about your songs and your guitars? I love those songs. Yeah. Those songs make me laugh.

Yeah. Those are really, really funny. I want to play a scene from the third season of Friends. This is Phoebe and Ross. played by David Schwimmer, and as she explains to him, who's a paleontologist, that she doesn't buy evolution or gravity. Let's listen. That's fine. Go ahead and scoff. You know, there are a lot of things out there that I don't believe in, but that doesn't mean they're not true. Such as?

Like crop circles or the Bermuda Triangle or evolution. Whoa, whoa, whoa. But you don't believe in evolution? No, not really. You don't believe in evolution? I don't know. It's just, you know, monkeys, Darwin. You know, it's a nice story. I just think it's a little too easy.

Too easy? The process of every living thing on this planet evolving over millions of years from single-celled organisms is too easy? Yeah, I just don't. buy it. Excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe.

Evolution is scientific fact. Like, like, like the air we breathe. Like, gravity. Oh, okay. Don't get me started on gravity. You, uh, you don't believe in gravity? Well, it's not so much that, you know, like, I don't believe in it. You know, it's just, I don't know. Lately, I get the feeling that I'm not so much being pulled down as I am being pushed.

She was ditsy, but also deep. To play that combination of those two things together, I mean, it takes a very specific way that you were able to nail. There's also a lot of, there's the chemistry there. You can even hear it, even without us watching it. Right. Oh, yeah, that was the best part of that part of my life. Everyone's so good. I can imagine getting a role like, Friends, it's a role of a lifetime because it's one of those

world where the show itself becomes a part of Americana. And so you're always connected to that. So there's the blessing part of it. Did you ever have another relationship with it, though, that constantly being called Phoebe, being referenced, people coming up to you, probably just saying lines and wanting you to repeat those lines, stuff like that? Well, my first response is always, I have zero complaints about friends or anything to do with it because every part of it was 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, you know?

It was great. Well, part of it is you all spent 16, 20 hours a day. Right, especially in the beginning. But we made sure we did. We played poker together while we're waiting for the run. through or while, you know, any downtime, we spent that time together on set. And Jimmy Burroughs helped also. And, you know, we just lost him, so that's heartbreaking.

But Jimmy Burroughs is a legendary director and creator. He did Cheers. And before that, his first job was Mary Tyler Moore Show. I kind of. And then directed the Bob Newhart show. No, and Will and Grace, he did every one of them. So he did the first 10 episodes of friends. He did the pilot and the first 10 episodes.

And, you know, it was his idea that Warner Brothers give him the Warner Brothers jet, private jet, and he flew us to Las Vegas, just us, no boyfriend's girlfriends, none of us were married yet, showed us the first episode on the plane on the way to Las Vegas and gave us each $200 to gamble with, which was so thrilling and then made us stop gambling to go eat, which is always irritating to me. But anyway, and he took us to Spago and said, pay attention. This is the last time the six of you can be out in public like this and not be recognized. And I remember everyone going, and I thought, maybe. I don't know.

I mean, how does he know? Right. Well, how does he know? Because he's been around and he knows. He knows when he has a success. What's going to work, yeah. Lisa Kudrow, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is really fun. Award-winning actor Lisa Kudrow.

She's nominated for two Emmys for the final season of the HBO series The Comeback, and she just finished shooting a sequel to the 1997 film, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Year's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Stanishefsky. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moosley.