Fresh Air - Matthew Perry / Lisa Kudrow

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

We remember actor Matthew Perry, who died last week at age 54. He spoke with Terry Gross in 2007 about auditioning to play Chandler Bing on Friends, and how overnight fame changed his life. And we'll listen back to our 2003 interview with his Friends co-star, Lisa Kudrow, about her time on the show. Justin Chang reviews Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. Incouley. The actor Matthew Perry died last weekend, found unresponsive in his hot tub in Los Angeles. He was 54 years old. In the last years of his life, he was best known for his efforts to discuss and combat substance abuse, including his own. Last year, he wrote a best-selling memoir detailing his own struggles with addiction. Its title was Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. But Matthew Perry became known and became a beloved television star

as one of the ensemble cast members of the hit NBC sitcom Friends. That series ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004, and Perry's character of Chandler Bing was a major part of its success. Hey, new wallet, huh? Oh, yeah, it was time. The old condom ring in the leather. It just doesn't say cool anymore.

Good. Is this a gym card? Oh, yeah. Gym member. I try to go four times a week, but I've missed the last 1,200 times. Chandler was sarcastic and lovable. And when his relationship with one friend, Courtney Cox as Monica, turned romantic, the audience's delight at this pairing became a pop culture event.

During the episode in which Chandler finally proposes marriage to Monica, you can hear the outburst of delight from the studio audience. But not before Monica gets down on her knees and, very emotionally, tries to propose to him first. Chandler, in all my life, I never thought I would be so lucky yes to fall in love with my best my best there's a reason why girls I can do this. I thought that it mattered what I said or where I said it. Then I realized the only thing that matters is that you... You make me happier than I ever thought I could be.

And if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you feel the same way. Monica, will you marry me? Yes. Matthew Perry began acting as a teenager, appearing in individual episodes of such shows as Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons, and Beverly Hills 90210. During his 10-year run on Friends, he guest starred on a number of other quality TV series, including Ally McBeal, The West Wing, and The Good Wife. And after Friends, he starred in an Aaron Sorkin series about television, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. That show lasted only one season, but Perry's true friendship with his Friends castmates lasted for the rest of his life. When co-starring on that sitcom, the actors negotiated together as a unit. This week, days after Perry's

death, the five surviving stars of Friends issued a joint statement. It ended like this, quote, For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty's family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world, unquote. Terry Gross spoke with Matthew Perry in 2007 when he was starring in the film Numb. Written and directed by Harris Goldberg, it's about a screenwriter who is having a breakdown and is diagnosed with depersonalization syndrome. Matthew Perry, why did you want to star in Numb have to work for a while. And I read this script, and I related to a lot of it in my own life. This character's isolation and this character's fear and his kind of desperate attempt to improve his life on a daily basis I completely related to. So I read the script, and then I had a meeting with Harris a couple days later,

and we just talked about what he had gone through and what this character goes through. And I thought it was just an excellent opportunity for me to really do something different. There was less pressure to be funny, although there is comedy in the movie, but it was this guy's desperate struggle to improve his life. And I really related to it. The character holed himself up in his house for weeks at a time. I've done that in the past. And I just thought it was an excellent opportunity to do something different for me. And I was also moved by the story. One of the things that most people hope to achieve by fame is desirability, that everybody will want to spend time with you.

You can go to the best dinners or parties and have your choice of partners or whatever. And you were talking about identifying with the isolation that the character feels and identifying with holding yourself up for weeks, you know, at home. What made you want to isolate yourself? What made you feel isolated? Because I'm assuming you're referring to a time when you were well known and could have been, you know, in a very social world. I would like to say at this point that I feel that I am still very well known. No, I'm just kidding. What I was talking about was

I think dealing with Friends, I got that show when I was 24 years old and the kind of the white hot flame of fame at that point was pretty disillusioning to me. At first, it was kind of everything I'd ever wanted, and I was getting all this attention, and it was wonderful. But then I kind of realized that it wasn't real, and that it was sort of this, existed in this, you know, kind of ether, and it became kind of scary to me. So I spent a lot of time at home watching TV during that time and just not wanting to deal with reality, and that's really what I related to most in this story. What was scary? you know, closed were now open and creatively that was good. But it just, you know, if you're fortunate enough or unfortunate enough to be in a situation that becomes that huge overnight, just the entire world changing is scary in and of itself.

You were a really like well-known public figure when you'd go through periods of like isolation or whatever. And you also went through a period of being in rehab and so on, and that was written up in the press. So it must be really hard to go through periods like that when you're living under the microscope? It must be hard to go through periods like that when I'm living under the microscope. Yes, of course it was. Yes, I have, unfortunately, a rather well-documented history with having to deal with certain issues in my life on the public level. I've managed to kind of turn that around, though, for me, where it gives me much more of an opportunity now to help other people who are going through similar struggles. It also made it impossible for me to

just go to a bar and have a drink, because if you're on the cover of People magazine in rehab, you're going to turn some heads. So I turned it into a positive. Before you got the part of Friends, did you do verbal witty parts? Was that the kind of role that you saw yourself as getting? Hmm. Yeah, before Friends, you know, I was auditioning for everything. And what I would find that the parts that I was getting was sitcom auditions and people that were at least trying to be funny. And I think that's largely due to growing up in Canada around a bunch of kind of goofy, funny people. And I just learned all these kind of comedic rhythms to make kids laugh or make girls laugh in school. And I would use those in my auditions and kind of nine times out of 10 early on, I would get these little sitcom auditions that

I would go out for. And at the time it was important to me to be on TV, and I thought it was a fun job. So that's certainly how it started. I mean, comedy came easier to me than drama, than the stuff that I'm playing out in the movie Numb, which is a little bit harder for me to do. I've read that when you auditioned for Friends, you actually weren't going to audition because you were tied up with another pilot, but you ended up auditioning and you already knew the lines because you had so many friends who were auditioning for the part that you eventually got. What was it like for you to audition for the part, having heard friends of yours do it in their way? Like you'd already heard so many versions of the character. that year, just for the money, the pilot was about baggage handlers in the year 2194 at the LAX airport. And needless to say, it wasn't very good. But what that did was it rendered me off the market for that pilot season. And then all of a sudden, this wonderful script at the time called

Friends Like Us came around. And it just had a part in it that leapt off the page as something that was very similar to me and had my rhythms. And it was about a guy who was sort of trying to distract everybody from how miserable he was all the time by being funny. And so a lot of my friends, comedic actors, comedic out-of-work actors tend to gravitate towards one another and we would have lunch and hang out all the time. And this part came around, and a lot of people saw that it was sort of similar to me. And because I was off the market, they had asked me to run the scene with them and help them with their auditions. And finally, after the fourth person did, I just said, well, listen, I think I've got a really good line on this character. Why don't you let me just do this scene for you and just take any choices that you like?

And a couple of guys I did that for, and they did very well on those choices and got to network and got to the final levels. And I was, you know, I was a little disappointed, of course, because I thought that the show was going to be good and I couldn't be on it. And then what ended up happening was some of the powers that be at the network and the studio saw the pilot that I did, the futuristic baggage handler show and decided probably wasn't going to get picked up. So I got a phone call saying from my agent saying, you know, you have an audition for the show on Wednesday. And at that point, when I got that phone call, I knew, and I've never felt that way before in my life and probably never will again. I knew that I was going to get the job. I knew that it was going to change my life just even before I went in to read for it. Now, how did you get the part in Studio 60, which is in hiatus now, hoping it comes back?

And on that you play, there's two tv shows that recently premiered that are kind of like backstage at saturday night live kind of shows there's the comic one um and then studio 60 is more of a drama done by you know written by aaron sorkin who who did the west wing which you had a part on for for for one of the arcs um so how did you end up playing the head writer on this show in Studio 60? Well, I had little or no interest in returning to television because my theory at the time was

I'd already been fortunate enough to be on one of the better shows, so why go back? And I had just completed this TNT movie that we shot in Canada called The Ron Clark Story. And I was in my hotel and my manager called and said that Aaron Sorkin had written a pilot about backstage at a Saturday Night Live type show. on it and they emailed the script to me and at about two o'clock in the morning in the business center of one of these hotels I just read it on the computer and by the time I had finished it I thought to myself oh boy I guess I'm gonna have to do another television show because the character was so great and the writing was so wonderful and Aaron Sorkin is one of the biggest freaky Friends fans in the world it just happens to be that he's seen every episode like 15 times and um he you know uh I guess was a fan of my work

on that show and then when I came to do the West Wing which was a much more toned down version a much more dramatic uh performance than what I had done on Friends. So, you know, for whatever reason, he had written the part for me. And the guy is slightly cynical. He's messed up. He's dark. He's a genius. He's all the things that Aaron Sorkin is. And what the show, as these things tend to happen these things tend to happen over the last year, the show is that character has become sort of a combination of Aaron and myself. Yeah. And what,

one of the things that you guys have in common in addition to being like smart and maybe a little cynical and funny and, and all that, you, you also have like a period of like drug problems in your background as does your character. And I wonder if that kind of helps link you to the character and to each other. You know, I think so. The character in the pilot was on Vicodin because of back surgery. And that obviously left off the page for me because I thought it afforded him to be a little freer and a little crazier in the pilot

and a little darker. So I've had my history with that and he's had his history as well. They're both very separate histories, but there's a lot of that darkness in Hollywood. There's a lot of that kind of history in writing rooms all over the place. So, you know, that just added to my interest in the project, that's for sure. Do you remember the first time you saw yourself on film or on video and how that jived or didn't jive with your self-image of yourself? Yeah, it's very interesting. You know, a lot of actors don't watch their own stuff and a lot of actors watch a lot of it,

and I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I mean, at first, as a young actor, when I was 16 or 17, I couldn't get enough of it. It was just, you know, it was just so much fun to be able to see my work on television, and now I'm less apt to watch it because I still sort of watch it with that juvenile kind of eye. I could be doing the most important scene in the world

and I'm more concerned about what my hair looks like or what I'm wearing. So it's a very bizarre profession us actors have put ourselves into because you can see it. It's like in other professions, you're kind of submitting your work and it's on a piece of paper, and people either like it or not,

but it's your work. This is you. Did you look like you expected to? Were you surprised at seeing yourself the way other people see you? Did I look like I expected myself to look? Because mirrors are different than cameras. They are. I think I probably looked like I thought I was going to look,

but it's what's going on in my head that's the problem. As I said, I'll look immediately at what I think are the bad things before the good. That's why I try not to watch it too often. Now, I know when you were growing up, your father did Old Spice ads. And for anybody who doesn't know or remember Old Spice, it was kind of like aftershave and cologne. It was really, really popular in the 60s and I think in the 70s too. So your father was the guy who did the commercials on TV for Old Spice?

Yeah, that's actually led to most of my problems because my father is the handsomest man in the world. So that's led to why I look at myself on TV in the first place and also why I immediately go to the problems. But yeah, that was my, you know, a lot of you guys probably remember the, you know, there was that Old Spice commercial where the sailor has like a tote bag and he's whistling and all the women are. Right. So was it a lesson in what show business was like to have a father who is famous from commercials? Well, it was an interesting lesson on all fronts to have a father in this business because I got to see the highs and lows because he would, you know, he would have one year that was just off the chart successful and then he would have a year that wasn't. And, you know, he's one of those actors that have, you know, managed to work for 40 years in this business.

And, you know, I saw a lot of the highs and lows. I would see like him go out for pilots and either get them or not. And, you know, what that what that kind of does to your attitude on a daily basis. So his big lesson to me was to make sure that there's something else in your life that is more important than acting or you'll go bananas. And so I've tried to follow that, and I know that he feels that way too. So your mother was the press secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. So one parent is exposing you to like, you know, Hollywood and the other to politics. What was your impression of the

political world growing up? Well, I was absolutely fascinated by it. And she was around during Jean Chrétien's liberal leadership campaign. And I was right there as a 12-year-old kid just watching all of that happen and watching all those campaigns. And it was just fascinating. It was bizarre because my mother was sort of in the public eye when I was a kid as well, just from a completely different arena. But I was fascinated by it as a kid and watching all these people gather together and celebrate all these politicians. It was really fun.

Did you see her on TV a lot? Did you have to make a lot of public statements? I did. I saw her on TV a lot, you know, especially during the campaigns and stuff, because she was always kind of, you know, around. So it was really an interesting time. So you grew up in an environment where the people who you knew best, your parents, were on TV a lot. So I guess, does that make it any more or less of a big deal to be on TV yourself? Well, the most interesting thing was, you know, I grew up in Canada, in Ottawa, Canada, and, you know, with my mom, and the way that I would see my father on a regular basis was on TV. He would call me up and say, you know, I'm doing an episode of Mannix or I'm doing an episode of this.

And that's the way I got to kind of see my dad. So I really think I generated a huge respect for television and for the industry because of that. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Well, thank you. This was really fun. Matthew Perry, speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. The star of Friends died last week at age 54. After a break, we'll hear from one of his Friends co-stars, Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe. And Justin Chang reviews Sofia Coppola's new film, Priscilla.

I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com'll get all the week's interviews and reviews in one place. Plus, staff recommendations, interviews from the archive, bonus audio, and what's coming up on the show. Imagine, an email you enjoy getting. To subscribe, go to whyy.org slash fresh air. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television history at Rowan University. We've just listened to our interview with Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the hugely successful TV show Friends. He died over the weekend at the

age of 54. We thought we'd hear another interview with a Friends co-star, Lisa Kudrow. She played the quirky character Phoebe. When Terry spoke with her in 2003, she was starring in the film The Opposite of Sex, and Friends was in its final season. Let's begin with a clip from Friends. Matthew Perry's Chandler has begun a secret romance with Monica, but their friends find out. Here, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe seduces Chandler in an attempt to force Chandler to confess to his romance with Monica. Hey. Hey. Ooh, wow, that jacket looks great on you.

Really? Yeah, the material looks so soft. Oh, hello, Mr. Bicep. Have you been working out? Well, I try to, you know, squeeze things. Oh. You been working out? Well, I try to, you know, squeeze things. Are you okay? Well, if you really want to know, I can't tell you this.

Maybe it's me. You can tell me anything. Well, actually, you're the one person I can't tell this to, and the one person I want to the most. What's going on? I think it's just, you know, that I haven't been with a guy in so long. And you know how sometimes you're looking for something and you just don't even see that it's right there in front of you, sipping coffee? Oh, no, have I said too much?

Your timing, your comic timing is so good. And I'm just wondering, you know, talk about intuitive. Is that something that's intuitive or something that you worked on, that you were trained in? Oh, I think it's intuitive. I go back and forth on it because I think every actor, I think everybody has the capacity for comedy. And everybody has the capacity for acting. But I don't know.

I think this is interesting to me. I was involved with the Groundlings, which is an improvisational sketch comedy group in L.A. And in one of the classes, there was this actor who had worked a lot and um really good actor and he was having a little trouble with the comedy he felt that's why he was taking this class and he asked me at one point you know you just i don't know how to do it and you're doing it and you're funny and i want to do that and i don't know why but. I said, yeah, but you're an actor. Just be in the scene and listen and then just respond. And I think it'll be funny.

And he did, and it got funny. He stopped trying. He relaxed into the comedy. And it feels like that's all it is. You've got to just relax into. The more you relax, the funnier it can be. The more open you are, I don't know. I tell you, I'm really inarticulate about this stuff.

Right, yeah. Well, I'm not agreeing with you that you're inarticulate. Right, yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. I heard it. Yeah. How do you feel about this being the last season of Friends? Is that a good thing for you?

It's a mixed bag of emotions. I love TV. I like a TV schedule a lot, and I love everybody I'm working with. It's a good show. People like it. People watch it. That's all good. But it's fine that it's time to move on.

Honestly, I can't see doing this for another 10 years it has to end at some point this is as good a time as any what are some of the things you think you'll miss and some of the things you won't I'll really miss I'll miss those five actors

and the executive producers I've become friendly with I don't know that I'll miss and I think I'll even miss Phoebe or being her. You know, like putting on those, putting on that person. Because that's what it feels like, you know. I'd want to say putting on those clothes, but not literally because I actually hate the clothes. But just putting on that skin of Phoebe, I'll miss that.

What do you hate about the clothes? How unflattering they are, maybe, number one. It's not my style at all. And it's always tights. I hate pulling up tights. It's very silly, little things. But I don't know. I'll just miss it.

And in a way, I've missed the Phoebe that she started off being, to be honest. Anyway, I miss being so, you know, unreasonably optimistic and cheerful about absolutely everything. Because that was nice. That was a nice thing to do every day. Is it kind of a relief from yourself to do that? Yes. And a little of it seeps in. And I think it helps you cope with other things in your life better. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I actually have a hard time, you know, defining anyone as stupid or, you know, ditzy or any of that because it's an easier life and it maybe isn't so stupid. Is there anything in your life

that you feel really connects to the lives of the characters on Friends? You know, like, did you ever have like friends walking in and out of your house all the time and a small group of people that knew everything about each other and that were lovers with each other and all that stuff? No, not even in college. That was never part of my experience, to be honest, no. Did you have lots of friends or were you more on your own? Not on my own.

I've always had like a few good friends at a time and then some acquaintances you know but um now i never really had that core group of men and women you know that were just friends because i actually never really believed that i i honestly don't know that men actually like to be friends with women. Maybe they do now. Maybe they're different. But, you know, back when I was in college, it seemed like men were really only friends with women if there was a chance of, you know, some sex. Mm-hmm.

So, no, it really wasn't ever my experience. You know, there's been like a whole industry of shows inspired by Friends. And, I mean, there are times, and it's been like this for years, when you put on the TV and you feel like every half hour there's a new group of people in their 20s or 30s sitting on a couch talking to each other and having affairs with each other. Yeah. Is that bizarre for you to watch? In the beginning, it was. Not bizarre. I just thought, wow. Yeah. Raymond said that they think that you're establishing a new formula for TV success. And you're not. You've just hit on something with, you know, the casting, and they click with the writer's sensibilities, and you've created people and lots of backstory for these people.

So they feel fleshed out, and that's what it is. It's not just, oh, let's just put six, you know, young people in a room, see what happens. Right. Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe on the NBC sitcom Friends, speaking with Terry Gross in 2003. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to Terry's 2003 interview with Lisa Kudrow,

who played Phoebe on the TV show Friends. After college, she thought she would follow in her father's footsteps and pursue a career in medicine and research. But then the urge to go into acting took over. I started with John Levitz, who I grew up with. That's my brother's best friend and like a brother to me. And I had seen him struggle, you know, for a long time. And finally, he was working. He got on Saturday Night Live. And I just finally let him know, I think I'm going to pursue this now. And he said, great, go to the Groundlings.

So I've taken a lot of acting classes. I studied it in college. I've never learned more than I learned from the Groundlings and doing improvisation. When he told you to go there, did they just, like, let you in? No, absolutely not. No. They called up and said, when I called them, they said, what's your experience? And I said, well, in junior high, I. And so they said, yeah, we're going to refer you to this teacher who we work with a lot.

And she was a godsend. Her name's Cynthia Seghetti. And she was the best thing that could have happened to me. How come? Because she didn't take no for an answer. And embarrassment was not an option. You just had to do it. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

And, you know, it's improvisation, and that could be scary. And some of the exercises look really silly, like lifting a disc, you know. And I thought, that's so actor-y and embarrassing. I just can't. And the second class, I came in late, and she was just, you know, talking everyone through it. She wasn't like warm and nurturing, although she was warm. But she was, come on, do it. You can do it. Stop laughing. We'll laugh. We'll tell you when it's funny. You know, just how to stay committed. She just forced you sort of like with a gun to your head, you know, on being louder and staying committed. And I'm watching these people lift a disc and I'm so embarrassed for them except for one guy who's doing it. And now I understand what being committed is. He was so committed that it wasn't embarrassing. He looked like he was lifting a disc. He wasn't overdoing it. He wasn't embarrassed. He wasn't commenting on it. He was just there

acting like he's lifting a disc. And I understood what commitment was from that. wasn't overdoing it. He wasn't embarrassed. He wasn't commenting on it. He was just there acting like he's lifting a disc. And I understood what commitment was from that. Is it disc like a discus thrower? It's, it's, there's nothing there. You're pretending like, no, everyone's standing around in a circle and you're all working together to lift a disc. Oh, I see. I see. So it's a group exercise. Yeah. And, but there's this one guy who's doing it, and he's not embarrassing to me. And I thought, all right, well, I've got to be friends with that guy. That's for sure. And it was Conan O'Brien. Oh.

Yeah. So we became friends from that class on. We were very close friends. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And so I just kind of stuck with him because I thought, okay, he's got a handle on this. So how come you saw yourself as a comic actor? How did you know that at least at the beginning it was going to be about comedy for you? Because I thought, wow, you know, people in comedy don't seem to take themselves as seriously. I can handle that. I think I can handle that, being around those people. A lot of it was just about who would I have to deal with if I'm going to do this career? And that was also a big deterrent for so many years before I decided to do it.

What were you afraid of in terms of the people? Just, ugh. Pretentiousness? Not so much a pretentiousness as too otherworldly, too... You know, because I feel like they're genuine in their erroneous beliefs. That's how I felt about it, you know? What were the erroneous beliefs? Just, I don't know, a little too just anything goes. Because I was a really rigid kid and, you know, young adult. Really rigid. And I'm not saying I was right back then. That's just how I felt. These people are idiots, and I don't want to be one of them, and I don't want to be associated with them. What I came to find out was that they of elevating craft to an almost religious level?

Yes, thank you. That was exactly what it was. And what was your problem with that? It didn't ring true to me at the time. It just felt like somebody trying. Yeah, I mean, I think you were right when you said pretentious. I don't know why I rejected it so quickly. That was unfair.

Yeah, I don't know what made me so angry at you. No, maybe that was part of it. It just didn't ring true. It was something that I just always rejected. And, you know, I just lumped. I'm very black and white, and especially then. So I'd see an actor or an actress on a talk show and hate them, you know, and hate all their divorces and hate, you know, just how messed up they were and not seeing it, you know, behaving as if, and of course,

everyone would aspire to be me, you know, it's just, it really bothered me a lot. Do you think that the other women characters on Friends have been more sexualized than your character has been? Absolutely. Sure. And is that because yours is the more kind of comedic? No, I think it's because I'm not as sexual as they are. I mean, I'm not as, I don't project that as much as they do. So you think it's about you, the actress, not about the character? Yeah, I really do. I really do. You know, there's no end to the amount of dating and, you know, sexual experiences that Phoebe refers to. So the opportunity was definitely there, but I'm not comfortable doing that.

It's not any kind of moral belief or I'm against it. It's not that at all. I'm personally not comfortable with that. So I don't like photo shoots. We did one early on where this one photographer who does stuff, and he did that famous shot of Jennifer on the cover of Rolling Stone where you see like a like a fuzzy blurry version you know part of her tushy and it's just about the sexiest thing I'd ever seen and I thought it was beautiful and so we were all doing a shoot

the three girls and one of the it was that same photographer. I think it was before Jennifer's Rolling Stone cover. But he had us all doing different things that were kind of sexy and asked me to unbutton my top and keep unbuttoning it and opening it up just a little more. And as I was doing it, it felt awful to me. I didn't like the way it felt at all. I felt like taken advantage of. I just did. And I thought, what is this? All of a sudden, I'm like, I don't know. It didn't feel right. I'm like a sex performer right now. I have to be a sex performer for this photo shoot. And I wasn't comfortable with it.

So what'd you do? Did you say you're not comfortable and then button your shirt back up? Or did you say, well, you know, they're asking me to do this, and I'll be a good sport even though I don't feel comfortable? I was trying. It was more of get comfortable with this, Lisa. Come on. You know, stop that prejudice you have against everything. Maybe this is part of your old way of thinking, you know. And I tried, and I unbuttoned

it and I opened it a little and I tried and, you know, it just didn't feel comfortable. And the kind of face you have to make to look sexy, you know, opening your mouth a little and your eyes get really big and you purse your lips. That's like a comedy bit to me. And I've even done it as jokes in photo shoots or Polaroids. I always, as a joke, do this. To me, it's a crazy face, and it looks okay. It doesn't look crazy. That sexual pout.

Yeah, and it doesn't look crazy. It looks like what all these women look like when they look really sexy or doing these photographs. So now when I see those, I think, wow, the amount of contortion. It took me to achieve that. I can't believe that's what you do without even thinking twice about it. Huh. That's really funny. Do you know people who do that naturally, or do you think that whole style of sexual allure is almost always pure acting?

Oh, I think there are people who it's pretty natural for. I mean, my husband has a pout to him, and he's sexy, and that's natural, can't help it. Everyone in his family, they're all French, you know, they just are sexy, and it's no act. But yeah, so there are people like that. I know there are. But then there are others who, come on. Like, I know what you had to do to achieve that face and that arch. And it's just like so unnatural to me unless you're in, you know, a bedroom. Well, it's just been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe on the TV show Friends. She spoke to Terry Gross in 2003 during the show's final season. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film Priscilla.

This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Arriving in theaters a year after the Oscar-nominated biopic Elvis, the new drama Priscilla tells the story of Priscilla Presley and her relationship with Elvis. It's the latest movie written and directed by Sofia Coppola, and it stars Kaylee Spaney, who recently won the Best Actress award at the Venice International Film Festival for her performance as Priscilla Presley. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review. When I first heard that Sofia Coppola would be making a movie about Priscilla Presley, I thought, well, of course. Who better than Coppola, with her empathetic portraits of life inside the celebrity bubble, like Marie Antoinette in Somewhere, to turn Graceland into a young woman's

gilded cage. Who better than the director of The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring to tease out the inner life of a teenager who seized what she wanted, in this case a romance with the biggest star on the planet? Remarkably, Priscilla, adapted from Presley's 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me, didn't just live up to my expectations. It's Coppola's strongest movie in years. Intimate, queasily truthful, and piercingly sad. It begins in 1959, not long after 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, played by Kaylee Spaney, has moved with her family from Texas to West Germany, where her dad, an Air Force captain, is stationed. One day a man approaches Priscilla and asks if she'd like to meet Elvis Presley. Elvis, who's 24, is doing his military service in Germany,

and he regularly throws parties where he can meet and spend time with other Americans. Priscilla's parents warily agree to let her attend. At the party, where Priscilla is conspicuously the only minor, she's introduced to Elvis, who's played by Australian hunk Jacob Elordi from Euphoria. She's charmed by him, of course, and startled that he takes an interest in her. So, what are the kids back home listening to these days? Bobby Darin. And Fabian.

And you. That's good. I thought they might have forgotten about me. No. What about you? You got a favorite song? What are you going to make me give? Heartbreak Hotel. What kids still lying, huh?

Elordi's Elvis is entirely different from the flashier biopic version played last year by Austin Butler. This is a quieter, more interior Elvis, and also a more insidious one. He tells Priscilla how much he likes her, how much she reminds him of girls back home. Later, he gets her parents' permission to see Priscilla again, disarming their objections with his courtly southern manners and his claim that his intentions are honorable. They clearly aren't, even if the relationship remains chaste for now. They won't have sex until they marry years later. Even so, Elvis's manipulation of every aspect of their relationship is always apparent. Coppola's view of the situation is both complex and clear-eyed. She trusts us to be appalled by the imbalance of age and power

between Elvis and Priscilla, but she also lets us feel the swoony disorientation of being swept up in a superstar's orbit. She shows us the cracks in Elvis's Prince Charming veneer right from the start, the way he lavishes Priscilla with attention and then suddenly withholds it. That cycle continues after Elvis returns to the U.S. and invites Priscilla to visit and eventually move in with him at Graceland. If her parents have any objections at this point, we don't see them. They go along with the arrangement, provided that Priscilla finishes high school in Memphis. Working with the cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd and the production designer Tamara Deverell, Coppola gives us a Graceland that's gorgeous but stifling and often eerily hushed. Elvis is frequently away in Hollywood, tending to his flailing movie career and generating tabloid headlines about his flings with his co-stars. And long before he and Priscilla marry, we see Elvis's ugly side emerge, his habit of popping pills and sharing them with her,

his bursts of temper and physical violence, his need to control her by dictating her hairstyle and wardrobe to the point of reshaping her in his image. Coppola is such a precise filmmaker that she doesn't have to exaggerate any of this for us to feel sickened or to sense Priscilla's deep loneliness. And the director has an ideal collaborator in Kaylee Spaney. She gives Priscilla an intense watchfulness, as if she were observing her own tragedy from the outside. At the same time, Spaney doesn't play Priscilla as a passive victim. We see her strength when she rebukes her husband for his philandering and his addictions.

The birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie, offers only a brief respite from their unhappiness. As she's done in the past, Coppola makes subtly anachronistic use of music. Here, that includes covers of classic rock songs by the French band Phoenix, fronted by her husband, Thomas Mars. Notably, there are no Elvis songs, reportedly due to rights issues. Setback or not, it feels like the right decision in what is clearly Priscilla's story. That story is only partly told here. We don't see Priscilla's post-marital years, her friendship with Elvis until his death, or her own acting career. I'd happily watch a Priscilla sequel devoted to the naked gun years alone. Instead, Coppola brings this doomed love story to its most poignant possible conclusion. You leave this movie feeling sad and slightly dazed,

perhaps like Priscilla herself, as the last of her illusions finally disappears. Justin Chang is the film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed the new film, Priscilla. On Monday's show, award-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola tells us about her new film Priscilla. It looks at the love affair and age difference between Elvis and Priscilla Presley from Priscilla's point of view. We'll also hear about Sofia's 30-year career and behind-the-scenes stories about some of her iconic films. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Chirac. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Adam Staniszewski.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Inculi.