Lisa Kudrow worried she wouldn’t "mentally survive" life after ‘Friends’.
The 56-year-old actress was "concerned" how she would cope after the global fame she’d achieved during her years playing Phoebe Buffay on the sitcom – which ran for 10 years until 2004 – began to fade.
And her fears were partly why she signed up to play faded former comedy actress Valerie, who humiliates herself on a reality show, in 2005 movie ‘The Comeback’.
She said: "There were six of us who were put in the spotlight together, right? Yet it was still challenging, even though we had each other to bounce off.
"I know fame can be hard, even if that’s what people seek out, and, yes, at the time I made ‘The Comeback’, I was concerned.
"I was watching reality shows, wondering what they were going to do when the show is over. They don’t have anything else to keep them in the spotlight, and they’ve had the most humiliating things broadcast nationwide. I was worried about people not being able to mentally survive that — and, sure enough, there were casualties."
Lisa also hit out at the "train wreck" reality shows which she thinks broadcasters like to make because they are so "cheap" to produce, but she’s concerned people who are supposed to show off their real life on camera have invented "terrible" alter egos to make for better content.
Discussing how reality TV has become the norm, she told Sunday Times Culture magazine: "Right. Because they’re cheap to do.
"And nobody looks away from a train wreck.
"But they all feel more and more scripted. I worked with someone who produced one of those shows, and she said the stars say, ‘I don’t like how you edited my character.’ What do they mean? It’s their first name, address and children, what character?
"They’re a terrible version of themselves for the sake of being interesting."
Lisa Kudrow feared for life after Friends
