If you listen to enough podcasts, you start to see what a small world the entertainment industry can be. Lisa Kudrow offers one such example. To wit: I learned from Conan O’Brien’s podcast that Lisa Kudrow broke into the business thanks to her brother’s best friend, former SNL star Jon Lovitz, who helped Kudrow get into the Groundlings. In the Groundlings, Kudrow met and briefly dated Conan O’Brien, and in fact helped him land Late Night back in 1993, a detail I learned from Dax Shepard’s podcast. Meanwhile, I learned from Rob Lowe’s podcast that Lovitz’s friendship with Kudrow also made him friends with Courteney Cox, which led to a great story about Brad Pitt botching a housesitting gig and letting go of a dog that killed Lovitz’s cat.
Fittingly, it was Lisa Kudrow’s turn this time to appear on Literally! with Rob Lowe, where Kudrow again talked very fondly of Jon Lovitz (who was the originally envisioned along with Dana Carvey as the leads in Michael Bay’s Bad Boys). Kudrow also talked about the eventual Friends reunion on HBO Max, saying that they had already pre-taped one segment. “I pre-shot something already so we’re definitely doing it because I already shot a little something,” she told Lowe, adding that “it’ll be great.”
Interestingly, she seemed less interested in talking about Friends than she was in discussing a Rob Lowe sitcom that ran for only one season back in 2015, but that became something of a cult-hit on this very site before it was so unfairly canceled.
“I loved The Grinder,” Kudrow exclaimed during the podcast. “What happened?! What happened?! I loved it. You were hilarious. Fred Savage, fantastic. Every human on that show was great. I loved it. I don’t know what happened,” Kudrow continued.
Lowe agreed, saying that after The Grinder was canceled, he’d given up on comedy. “I’m not going to have a better fit. I’m never going to have a better show,” Lowe thought. “Every moment of it was perfect.”
“It was so good,” Kudrow added. “It’s so funny. It’s ridiculous and funny. That’s what made me go, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m done with the networks.’ I can’t do it anymore, because they won’t use their eyes and ears. All they’re looking at is a spreadsheet.” Kudrow mused, upset that networks seemed to have lost their ability to wait for audiences to find good shows.
“I’m out,” she said, punctuating her disinterested in the network television landscape while also adding, “And they canceled Last Man on Earth. That was such a great show, too!”
It’s true, too. Aside from an appearance on an episode of The Good Place, Kudrow has stayed completely away from network television since the demise of The Grinder. I don’t blame her. Grinder was fantastic, and maybe instead of rebooting so many shows, networks should start bringing back great series that they never gave a chance to catch on in the first place. They can start with Grinder and Enlisted.
Source: Literally with Rob Lowe!