Friends: The reunion has been in our lives for a little over a week, and one of the lasting moments has proven that Lisa Kudrow sinks back into Phoebe Buffay to sing “Smelly Cat” with Lady Gaga in a duet:
Resuscitating Phoebe for the first time in 17 years seemed effortless for Kudrow, but the 57-year-old actress revealed on the Ellen DeGeneres Show that it took some effort.
“I was really nervous when I first heard this, and then I prepared,” said Kudrow. “I realized that I had to learn ‘Smelly Cat’ all over again. And I tuned my guitar and then found I didn’t know the chords, but I Googled them. All the chords were there for ‘Smelly Cat’. “
Problem solved, right?
Not quite.
Kudrow continued, “Well, I learned, and then my throat closed. I was so panicked! I couldn’t get anything out of it. I didn’t know what was going to happen.
Friends: The Reunion also revealed that Kudrow was recreating the famous scene from “The One Where Everybody Finds Out,” in which Phoebe discovers that Monica (Courteney Cox) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) were in a relationship:
Friends: The Reunion finally landed on HBO Max on May 27th. The one-hour, 45-minute scriptless special brought together the six leading actors – Kudrow, Cox, Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer – for the second time only, since Friends completed their 10-season run in 2004.
View below Kudrow’s full segment with Ellen.
Megan Armstrong (@megankarmstrong) is a writer with previous work that has appeared in places like Billboard, Bleacher Report, GQ, and others. She is most interested in writing about people and how they live their lives, in the context of music, entertainment and sports.