When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.<\/i><\/p>\n Credit: Warner Bros. Television<\/p>\n It\u2019s amusing that even though Friends aired its final episode on NBC more than 20 years ago, we\u2019re still learning details about the inner workings of one of the best sitcoms of all time<\/a>. For example, who would have guessed the cast went through a combined 75 wardrobe changes<\/a> in the span of a half-hour? Well, Lisa Kudrow just spilled a little more tea, and it turns out Friends took quite a bit longer to shoot than other sitcoms at the time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good thing Lisa Kudrow doesn\u2019t mind recalling her days as Phoebe Buffay<\/a> on Friends, because she\u2019s been doing quite a bit of it lately as she promotes The Comeback Season 3 (both of which can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription<\/a>). During an interview with the Table Manners podcast<\/a>, she got into what a week in the life of a Friends star looked like, and when asked how long each episode took, she said:<\/p>\n A week. But you rehearse for a week, like a play. And then the audience comes, on the fifth day or fourth day, and you shoot it in front of the audience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It was like a play in the way that they had plenty of rehearsal before giving their final performance to a live crowd; however, at the theater, nobody stops to retake a scene if Jennifer Aniston can\u2019t stop laughing at Lisa Kudrow<\/a> singing along with David Schwimmer\u2019s bagpipes, or when Aniston accidentally answers a real call<\/a> on her cellphone while filming.<\/p>\n Even more than that, sometimes scenes or jokes had to be rewritten, Lisa Kudrow said, if they didn\u2019t go over with the live audience as intended. Kudrow continued:<\/p>\n It might not be funny enough, right? Or \u2018let’s see if we can improve on it.\u2019 Not us, the writers. Normally a half-hour show took around two [or] two-and-a-half hours, maybe three to shoot. Ours was six or more hours. We had two audiences. We had an audience that was waiting outside to come in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, filming a Friends episode actually took so long that they had to replace the live audience halfway through. But before you go thinking that\u2019s unfair to the fans who only get to see production of half an episode, Lisa Kudrow assured the hosts that after three hours, they were \u201chappy to leave.\u201d She said:<\/p>\n I think if someone \u2014 if they wanted to stay, they could. I don’t know. But I know at some point they’d bring in pizza. We’d be going for so long they’d bring food in for them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maybe that\u2019s where Ellen DeGeneres got the idea to order pizza for the Oscars audience<\/a>. That\u2019s really wild, when you think about it \u2014 the crew having to order food because they\u2019ve kept the audience so long. You\u2019re not going to get those laughs any easier if everybody\u2019s tired and hungry.<\/p>\n Speaking of being tired, though, with Friends episodes taking two or three times longer to shoot than a typical 30-minute sitcom episode, that meant some long nights for the cast and crew. To add to that, Lisa Kudrow said:<\/p>\n Yeah, and I was pregnant during that, and I was tired. And we’re shooting till 2 in the morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Too bad Central Perk wasn\u2019t serving up real coffee!<\/p>\n While producing one sitcom episode per week isn\u2019t unusual, I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll hear about many productions keeping their stars late into those a.m. hours. That couldn\u2019t have been easy, but hopefully in hindsight they can see their hard work was worth it. They are still reportedly making 10 figures a year in royalties<\/a>, after all.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n