Lisa Kudrow Was so Great on ‘Friends,’ She Won an Emmy Just for Talking on the Phone

Every Emmy season, hopeful winners try to figure out which episode of theirs is the episode that will convince every Academy voter that they delivered the goods during the previous year. Now, I’m not an actor nor am I an Academy member, but I still think it’s pretty obvious which episodes performers would pick to showcase their talents. For example, David Hyde Pierce won in 1999 for submitting the episodes where he played sneezy Jesus and set Frasier’s apartment on fire. Shelley Long won her only Emmy for the Cheers pilot, essentially a stage play starring just her and Ted Danson. On the Friends front, Jennifer Aniston won in 2002 for the two-parter where Rachel gave birth. Actors want to submit episodes where they have big, meaty moments.

And then there’s Lisa Kudrow, who won her only Emmy for a Friends two-parter where she basically just talks on the phone. That’s how good Lisa Kudrow is! For Lisa Kudrow’s birthday, it is definitely worth revisiting the phone call(s) that won her the gold.

The episodes in question are the Season 4 finale two-parter, “The One With Ross’s Wedding.” To refresh your memory, as if you haven’t rewatched Friends hundreds of times by now, this is the season where Kudrow’s IRL pregnancy was written in as part of an in vitro fertilization plot wherein Phoebe carries her brother’s children. This moment coincided with the show’s decision to do the wild and crazy thing of filming their season finale in London, where the show had skyrocketed in popularity. There was one problem: both Kudrow the actor and Phoebe the character were too pregnant to fly to London. The Emmy-winning solution they came up with was to just have Phoebe talk on the phone a lot.

Now okay, to be fair, Phoebe spends Part 1 hanging out with Rachel back in NYC, and there are so many great moments. “Do you need a hug? You don’t have to bring me anything,” “We thought you knew! We all know, we talk about it all the time!”–Friends fans can hear those quotes in Kudrow’s hilarious cadence. In fact, Part 1 proves that Kudrow has chemistry with everyone since it’s one of the pretty rare Kudrow/Aniston plots, rare at least until they briefly become roommates a little later.

And then at the end of Part 1, Rachel sets out on a mission to confess her love to Ross before he walks down the aisle and marries Emily–and if you look all the way to the right in the pic below, you get a quick example of why you should never re-edit shows shot in 4:3 to fit a 16:9 frame.

This episode is now known as “The One Where You See The Soundstage.”

Anyway–Part 2 immediately kicks off with Kudrow winning an Emmy. I’m not kidding. Phoebe, determined to warn her friends in London that a wedding wrecker is on her way, places her first phone call to Ross’ fiancee’s parent’s home. She gets into a transatlantic tussle with the Waltham family housekeeper, who decides it’s more important to give the American a lesson on etiquette than to listen for a sec. Phoebe’s response is gold.

When that doesn’t work, Phoebe lets the New Yorker in her out to play.

Yep, she just won an Emmy in the cold open, sitting alone on a set, and presumably responding to a crew member saying the other lines.

The phone calls just keep coming, though, and Kudrow keeps owning them. When she calls Emily’s mother, played by the fantastically droll Jennifer Saunders, she almost meets her comedy match. I still love Mrs. Waltham’s response (“… am I on the radio?”), but Phoebe explaining why she’s missing her best friend’s wedding is perfection.

Kudrow delivers that line with total “what’re ya gonna do” energy, as if it’s a throwaway line and not the absolute weirdest response to Mrs. Waltham’s question. Could Kudrow have won a second Emmy just for this one line? No? She should’ve.

Then when Phoebe finally gets hold of Joey, she frantically shuts down his hook-up story to relay the information. Note: since Phoebe is the only person that knows Rachel’s plan who isn’t Rachel, it is Lisa Kudrow alone selling all of the massive stakes for this major plot–and she’s doing that while holding a prop phone to her ear. And as soon as she’s passed the task on to Joey, she immediately turns into a smiling chatty Cathy who wants all the tea about Joey’s little bridesmaid rendezvous.

The show also doesn’t leave Phoebe out of the big moment later when Ross slips and says “take thee, Rachel.” The quick reaction shots include Phoebe, who’s listening from across the pond–and her reaction might be the best one?

So, what, that’s Emmy #3 for this episode? Yeah.

Kudrow clearly deserved 10 Emmys for all 10 seasons of Friends, so the fact that she won for Season 4 isn’t a surprise. What is a surprise is that she spent the episodes she submitted mostly or totally alone, performing in a one-person show about a pregnant masseuse stranded in an apartment that’s not hers who is frantically trying to stop an international disaster armed with just a phone. A super weird set-up but, turns out, that’s another way to win an Emmy.

Stream Friends "The One With Ross's Wedding" on Netflix