Lisa Kudrow admits being fired from Frasier was 'devastating' and led to her fearing she was 'hopeless' as Phoebe in Friends - before the iconic role catapulted her to superstardom

Lisa Kudrow has confessed being fired from Frasier was 'devastating' and led to her fearing she was 'hopeless' in her now ionic role of Phoebe Buffay in Friends.  

The actress, 61, was hired to play producer Roz Doyle back in 1993 opposite Kelsey Grammer in the title role, but she was given the boot before the pilot episode was filmed and replaced by Peri Gilpin.

Lisa has now admitted losing such an important job was a huge setback and told the Smartless podcast how the director James the Burrows, who she would go on to work with on Friends, stopped a script run-though to declare 'this isn't working'

Lisa said: 'I was trying to like [ask], 'What can I do?' But I think they did make a casting mistake because I went to the network with Perri Gilpin. I think they were just correcting a mistake. Cause Perri should have always been Roz.'

However, the firing led Lisa down a new path with helped her land her life-changing role on Friends after taking a bit-part in comedy series Mad About You.

She explained: 'I did a guest star on Mad About You, they had me back, I'd already done a guest star the first season'. 

'So now I'm there for a different character [just called 'waitress'] and my agent said, "You're not doing this". [I was] not in a position to say no. It's to me the best show and I'm doing it.'

Afterwards, she was invited back for five more episodes declaring: 'There's my rent for the year' and luck was on her side because the show's writer and producer Jeffrey Klarik later suggested Lisa for the role of Phoebe Buffay when his partner David Crane was putting together the cast of Friends.

Lisa ended up encountering her former Frasier director James Burrows again when she had to audition of him for her Friends  role and she came away from the try-up worrying it was 'hopeless' but she went on to be cast anyway and the part completely changed her life.

She won an Emmy for Best Actress for the role which she played from 1994 to 2004, and alongside her cast mates,  Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox and Matthew Perry, would go on to earn a whopping $1M per episodes in the later seasons of the smash hit sitcom.

It comes after Lisa admitted that she is still haunted by the studio audience's laughter while filming Friends, two decades after the series aired its final episode. 

While appearing on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, the actres explained why she disliked the sound of the live audience chuckling at her jokes. 

'[I was irritated] because they were laughing for too long. It wasn’t that funny,' she explained to O’Brien. 'That’s why. It wasn’t an honest response, and it irritated me.'

She continued: 'It’s like, "now you’re just ruining the timing of the rest of the show." Sometimes I would just look out if they’d been laughing too long, and go, "come on." Really angry.' 

'It’s made for the TV viewers at home. That’s who we’re in service to,' she insisted. 'If it were a stage play – yeah, laugh as long as you want! I’ll figure out things to keep my character busy, waiting to continue with it, that’s fine. But then, it’s being filmed, and now I’m just sort of like standing there.'

Kudrow said the noise made herself do 'things that you hate' like nodding along as if to say: 'That's right! I said that!'

She went on to note that the show’s warm-up act would specifically advise the audience not to do 'anything like that.'

The mother-of-one, who is married to Michel Stern, pointed out that it would take 'six to eight hours' to shoot a half-hour episode of the beloved program.

This is the second time this month that Kudrow has spoken about feeing frustrated by the live audience during her time on Friends.

Earlier this month, she told Entertainment Tonight that it 'irritated' when 'they [the studio audience] would laugh for too long.' 

'God bless them. They were so excited to be there that sometimes the laughter would just be longer than if they would have laughed at anything else,' the Romy and Michele's High School Reunion star said. 

Lisa added, 'I was like, "All right, well, take it easy. It’s not that funny. And there's more to say!"' 

The clarification comes after Aniston stated that Kudrow 'hated when the audience laughed' while they filmed Friends during her Variety's Actors on Actors interview.

'She'd be like, "I'm not done! It's not that funny!"'