One of the best parts of “Frasier,” the Kelsey Grammer-led sitcom that began in 1993, was Peri Gilpin’s Roz Doyle. Unlike Frasier, Doyle was a completely new character disconnected from the show’s parent series, “Cheers,” so the writers had total freedom with what to do with her. They made her Frasier’s sarcastic radio show producer, who slowly became one of his best friends.
Few fans have any complaints about Peri Gilpin’s performance in the role, which makes it harder to imagine that Roz Doyle was originally supposed to be played by Lisa Kudrow instead. Kudrow was cast as Doyle but fired before she could film the pilot, an event the actress described as “devastating” in a recent interview on the Smartless podcast. She talked about how, during an early run-through of the pilot, the director James Burrows told Kudrow “This isn’t working,” and that was it.
Kudrow believed it all came down to a casting mix-up: “They did make a casting mistake because I went to the network with Peri Gilpin,” she said. “I think they were just correcting a mistake. Cause Peri should have always been Roz.”
In a 2023 interview, James Burrows shed some light on why he fired Kudrow, describing an early scene in the pilot that didn’t quite work with her:
“The speech before Frasier goes in a confronts his dad, the Lupe Velez speech, which is the Lupe Velez story, which is she wanted to [die by] suicide, so she dressed in a very nice robe and walked into the bathroom to get her pills and she slipped, hit her head on the tub and died. Her speech he had to give, but Kelsey is such a strong personality and Lisa’s, what she does great is ethereal and it just didn’t work in that moment.”
Lisa Kudrow was cast in Friends just a year later
Much like how Amanda Walsh’s performance as an early version of Penny in the original pilot of “The Big Bang Theory” wasn’t quite working, Kudrow’s delivery just wasn’t the right fit for what a character like Roz Doyle needed. It’s easy to imagine Kudrow’s heartbreak after losing such a promising role — not only did “Frasier” go on for 11 seasons, but after the massive hit of “Cheers,” the show had a built-in audience going for it from day one. Kudrow wasn’t a big star at the time, and for all she knew she could’ve ended up like so many unlucky actors who didn’t quite land that big life-changing lead role. (There was no big break for Walsh, for instance, after “The Big Bang Theory” fired her.)
Luckily, the ethereal quality of Ludrow’s acting turned out to be exactly what the writers of “Friends” were looking for with Phoebe Buffay, who is arguably the silliest and most unpredictable member of the six-person friend group. The first season of “Friends” aired in 1994; thanks partly to its time slot being right after the hit show “Seinfeld,” and also thanks to the uniquely strong chemistry between all the main cast members, “Friends” was a hit right out the gate, and continued being a hit for 10 whole seasons. The show’s ratings were so consistently high that by season 9 Kudrow was making $1 million per episode. As much as Kudrow’s firing from “Frasier” the year before “Friends” must’ve stung, at least we can all agree that things worked out for her nicely in the end.
