Friends star Lisa Kudrow has explained why she was fired from Frasier after being cast as a main character on the show.
In 1993, a year before Kudrow was cast in Friends as Phoebe Buffay, Kudrow successfully won the role of playing Roz Doyle in Frasier – the Cheers spin-off starring Kelsey Grammer as therapist Frasier Crane. The role was later played by Peri Gilpin.
However, before filming the pilot, Kudrow revealed to the SmartLess podcast that she was actually let go from the role. She explained: “I didn’t film it. I got fired from Frasier.”
The actor described the moment as “devastating” and went on to describe how director James Burrows told her during the episode’s run-through that things weren’t working.
Kudrow said: “I was trying to like [ask], ‘What can I do?’”, as she didn’t want to walk away from the part.
She went on to say that the show “did make a casting mistake because I went to the network with Peri Gilpin”, she continued, adding: “I think they were just correcting a mistake. Cause Peri should have always been Roz.”
After this, Kudrow won a role in Mad About You and after impressing producers, was asked to audition for Friends. Kudrow went on to reveal that she was “the only cast member” who had to audition for the role in the show because she “had just gotten fired from Frasier”.
She continued: “When I had my audition, I did it… it was just this small room. He is sitting at a desk. I’m in a chair, and the audition was like a little monologue. And when I’m done, he just went, ‘No notes.’ And I thought, ‘Alright. I don’t know what that means. It’s hopeless.’”
Kudrow went on to play Phoebe in Friends for 10 seasons and eventually won an Emmy for her part in 2008.
Gilpin played Roz in all 11 seasons of Frasier and returned to the show in last year’s reboot.
Meanwhile, back in June, Grammer revealed that he would like Cheers stars Ted Danson and Shelley Long to reprise their roles in the Frasier reboot.
The pair played bartender Sam Malone and waitress Diane Chambers in the sitcom, which ran from 1982 to 1993, and centered around a Boston bar named ‘Cheers’. Their characters shared an on-again, off-again romance, with Grammer’s character Frasier being introduced as another love interest for Diane.
Spin-off series Frasier which took Grammer’s character to Seattle ran from 1993 to 2004 and received critical acclaim, earning 37 Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 2023, it was rebooted, taking Frasier back to Boston, the home of the ‘Cheers’ bar and the setting for the beloved series.
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