Lisa Kudrow Says She Was Told She Wasn’t Pretty Enough to be Cast as a Series Regular Before ‘Friends’

Lisa Kudrow says that prior to being cast on ‘Friends,’ she was told she didn’t have “the look” of a series regular.

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Lisa Kudrow said early in her career she was told she didn’t have the “gorgeous” look sitcoms wanted

“I didn’t look like women who were getting cast as series regulars on sitcoms,” she told The Hollywood Reporter

Kudrow has previously revealed she felt overlooked during Friends, with some referring to her as “the sixth Friend”

Lisa Kudrow says that prior to being cast on Friends, she was told she didn’t have “the look” of a series regular.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kudrow, 63, said of her early days in Hollywood: “I didn’t look like women who were getting cast as series regulars on sitcoms.”

“They still wanted a certain look — very pretty and appealing and all of that — and not that funny, right, except for Shelley Long… I was told, ‘It’s very hard because you’re not gorgeous, and they want gorgeous,’” Kudrow said. “And I’m like, ‘Okay’… I don’t think that’s ridiculous. I got it. Also, it’s not just how you look; it’s how you act, too. I’m not ‘cute.’ And God, I didn’t want to be cute.”

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The actress — who recently premiered the third and final season of The Comeback — starred as Phoebe Buffay on Friends, which aired for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004.

The show followed six friends living in New York City, and also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry.

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Kudrow recently spoke out about feeling like the odd man out in the series, saying “nobody cared about me” when she played Phoebe in an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Independent published in April.

“Nobody cared about me,” Kudrow recalled. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.’ ”

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She went on to say that “there was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have.”

“There was just, like, ‘Boy, is she lucky she got on that show,’ “ Kudrow added.

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