The Best Time Phoebe Broke Character On Friends
"Friends" was designed to get people laughing, and over the course of its 10-season run, it did just that. The show, which concluded its run on NBC back in 2004, has remained one of the most popular sitcoms on TV thanks to streaming and syndication.
Although the show was specifically designed to get the audience to laugh, viewers weren't the only ones who found the jokes amusing. Each member of the series' ensemble cast broke out in laughter at some point over the 10 years they spent filming it, and those bloopers led to plenty of hilarious moments that had nothing to do with what was in the script.
Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe on the series, certainly had her fair share of crackups. She also had an odd habit of discussing her scenes with the live studio audience that had been assembled to watch and respond to the cast as they filmed the show. In her best moments, though, she revealed the ways that she and her character have quite a few things in common.
Lisa Kudrow helps Jennifer Aniston nail some dialogue
Although there were plenty of moments when Kudrow had trouble getting her lines out, perhaps the best moment she broke character comes during "The One With Joey's Award." In the episode, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) is describing a cake she saw that was in the shape of a man's "thing-a-ding," and asks Monica and Phoebe how they feel about it. After they weigh in, Rachel decides that it may be for the best if they cancel the cake. The line she's supposed to say after that is "if not, maybe we'll put eyes on the hootchies and we will just say it's some sort of weird elephant."
Unfortunately, Aniston had more than a little bit of trouble getting that line out without breaking into fits of laughter. The blooper reel shows Aniston's struggle to nail the line, and Kudrow eventually starts cracking up as well, even as she's reassuring her co-star that she'll be able to get it eventually.
The best moment in the sequence comes near the end, when Kudrow breaks the fourth wall to assure the audience watching the taping that there's a reason Aniston is having such a hard time nailing the joke. "It's funny, I can't wait for you to hear it," she tells the audience after they've failed to do the joke at least four separate times.
Throughout her many bloopers, it's clear that Kudrow was having a good time making the show. Phoebe was one of the wildest, zaniest parts of "Friends," and it seems that the actress who played her was equally hilarious on set — even when it was her scene partner who was really struggling to get a line out.