Lisa Kudrow is at the point in her career where she doesn't need to seek out a new series. She is a Friend, after all.
But she was immediately sold when Netflix called to pitch her No Good Deed. "They told me they had this series from Liz Feldman," she remembers. "Then they said, 'She did Dead to Me,' and I said, 'Yes.' Then they said, 'You'll play Ray Romano's wife,' and I said, 'Yes, yes, yes,' because he's effortlessly great. I didn't even read the script."
The eight-episode series follows three families as they vie to purchase a Spanish-style villa in L.A.'s Los Feliz neighborhood. While Romano's Paul thinks selling will solve his family's problems, Kudrow's Lydia — a former concert pianist — is reluctant to part with a space that holds both happy memories and dark secrets galore. "It was challenging for me, because it's an interesting tone," she says. "The sad parts are very real, so I had to be grounded. But it does qualify as a comedy, because it made me laugh aloud. That's my threshold."
Kudrow also starred this year in Taika Waititi's Apple TV+ reboot of Time Bandits, a lighthearted fantasy series that could not be more tonally different from No Good Deed.
Of course, she spent a decade (1994–2004) entertaining the masses as Phoebe Buffay on Friends. She still blanches at watching herself in some episodes, admitting, "There are moments where I'm like, 'I don't buy it. What are you doing?'" She also remains somewhat shocked that she won her Emmy for the 1998 episode in which a very expectant Phoebe mostly sits on the couch alone while her pals are in London. Kudrow herself was eight months pregnant, "so tired" and struggling to remember her lines.
By Emmy night, "I'd already done so much," she says. "I'd had my son, he's healthy, my husband [businessman Michel Stern] and I are so in love. Then I get to be on this show, and I get an Emmy nomination, and now I won?!" (The statuette remains in her home office.)
It may please Friends fans that Kudrow is a bit Phoebe-like when asked what's next. A season two of No Good Deed? "Yeah, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen." Another project? "Um ... I don't know! I compartmentalize too well." But she's excited to keep at it. "Oh, God, I love acting," she adds. "And I'm old now, so working with new people is always fun."
No Good Deed is streaming now on Netflix.
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #13, 2024, under the title "Right at Home."
