“I’m not trying to say I was overweight, either. I was not. I just had no idea the shape of my actual body.”
Lisa Kudrow says she thought she was “really skinny” until she started working with “Friends” costars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox.
The actress talked about how images on screen can “really distort reality” while appearing on the Podcrushed podcast earlier this year.
“I thought I was just really skinny. I can do whatever, [but] no, especially in high school. And I look at pictures and say, ‘Wow, pictures really distort reality,'” Kudrow recalled. “And it wasn’t until Friends that I realized, ‘Oh, I don’t look like I thought I looked.'”
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“And that’s what was so jarring, and that’s when it was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to actually lose weight? I have to diet? Shoot.'”
“It was just seeing myself on the show,” the now 59-year-old said, “and seeing myself in clothes and seeing Courteney and Jennifer in clothes.”
“And at first I thought, ‘Oh, because they know, like, tailoring, so they can discuss it with the costume designer about where, exactly, to take something in.”
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She said she had one of her costars join her for a fitting as she viewed Jennifer and Courteney as “sisters.”
“That’s when I would see, ‘Oh, okay, it’s not just about tailoring…’ And I’m not trying to say I was overweight, either. I was not. I just had no idea the shape of my actual body,” Kudrow said.
However, her self image has evolved over the years, as Kudrow explained, “I just realized, ‘Oh no — it’s okay. This is just what I look like. That’s okay. Do what you need to do to be healthy but this is your body and it’s okay.'”
The actress played Phoebe Buffay for 10 seasons on “Friends” from 1994 to 2004.