Friends star Lisa Kudrow: ‘Thank God I got fired'

An old video of Lisa Kudrow has resurfaced and gone viral (which is why the internet is so great) of the star reflecting on her struggle to “make it” in the acting world.

Before the glitz and glam of Hollywood, former Friends star Lisa was living from paycheck to paycheck and there were a few times when she thought acting “wasn’t meant to be”.

Her all-time low came at a point where she thought she’d actually made it on hit sitcom Frasier but was replaced by actress Peri Gilpin.

“This was my shot. I cried a lot. It was so embarrassing,” she admitted in her 2010 commencement speech at Vassar College in New York. Watch a snippet of the speech above.

“I got fired from Frasier. The one everyone knew was going to be a hit and it was. This time it was really hard to think it wasn’t meant to be my career as an actress,” the now 54-year-old admitted.

But it was actually a blessing in disguise for the actress.

“When one door closes, another always opens – that’s what I was telling myself to keep those moments of doubt only moments,” Lisa says in the speech.

She was right because after “many auditions” she was cast as Phoebe in the pilot for Friends Like Us which was eventually to become known as Friends.

She says the cast went on to share “the time I got fired” stories with one another, alongside director of the first ten episodes of Friends Jim Burrows who also directed Frasier.

“Jimmy told [the cast] mine, ‘Well, she’s got the worst one of all. She got fired from Frasier,’” she recollects in the speech.

The director told Lisa it was a “good thing” she was sacked from the sitcom because otherwise she would have never graced our screens as the wonderful and wacky Phoebe Buffay.

All of her disappointments in her career were “actually more like guideposts” keeping the star on her “path”.

“So, thank God I got fired,” she says in the speech.

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Too right. Friends has arguably become one of the most successful (if not the most successful) sitcoms ever.

For an entire decade, Lisa alongside co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Matt Le Blanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, captivated the world playing the 20-something characters living their lives in New York City.

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