The “Friends” Emmy winner was in Ireland, filming the 2007 comedy-drama “P.S. I Love You” with Hilary Swank, when she happened upon the television show “Who Do You Think You Are?” She was so intrigued to watch overseas stars comb through their genealogies, she felt the concept also would work in America … and the Kudrow-produced NBC version’s second season starts Friday, Feb. 4.

“That’s the only reason I’m doing the show in the U.S.,” Kudrow confirms to Zap2it. “I had very much a supporting role in the movie, so I’d be thinking, ‘I hope we’re done in time. I can watch that show.’ I caught it one night in my hotel room, and I could not believe what I was watching. I didn’t even know the people who were in it, but they’re household names in the United Kingdom.”

The sophomore round of Kudrow’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” begins with singer-actress Vanessa Williams, and Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Ashley Judd, Rosie O’Donnell, Lionel Richie and Kim Cattrall are set for future episodes. Kudrow had her own history traced in the first season, and she realizes people are sometimes surprised she’s the driving force behind the show, likely due to her iconic “Friends” portrayal of flighty Phoebe Buffay.

“A couple of times, I’ve heard, ‘Huh! This is really smart. And you thought of it?’ Alex Graham is the one who gets credit for it — he created it [for England's BBC] — but I just thought it was great, and I had the nerve to say, ‘Let’s do it here.’ Alex crafted a way to give out information that some people might find dry otherwise, and to make it really thrilling.”

Kudrow’s former HBO series “The Comeback” is getting a second life on Sundance Channel, and her Internet series “Web Therapy” will have added exposure on Showtime in the spring. She’s also on view as the guidance counselor who sets the rumor-driven complications in motion in “Easy A,” this year’s well-received movie comedy debuting on DVD and Blu-ray this week.

“Oh, that Emma Stone!,” Kudrow says of the film’s central star. “She’s amazing. Will Gluck, who directed it, is a really great writer; he’s fantastic. Every day on that movie was really fun.”

Source

The Provo company has signed a new contract with NBC that calls for it to sponsor the program and to provide marketing and research. In return, the program serves as a marketing tool for the company’s website-based business that sells access to records and other tools to uncover family histories.

The first season of the series that debuted in March featured the stories of seven celebrities including actress Sarah Jessica Parker, NFL great Emmitt Smith and filmmaker Spike Lee. Also featured was actress Lisa Kudrow, who helps produce the show and who convinced NBC to create the program in the United States after seeing the British version.

CEO Tim Sullivan said the company was looking to do something similar this next season as it did in the last in which its website was shown as a celebrity was researching her or his family history.

“It was not something that felt out of place, and it very effectively moved the story along,” said Sullivan.

In its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said an increase in subscribers to the website was “primarily as a result of increased interest in Ancestry.com stemming from NBC’s release of the U.S. version of the television show “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Sullivan said beyond the bump in subscribers, the company views the TV series as “something that could, over the long term, really change the basic level of awareness” about family history research.

Ancestry.com’s shares finished the day Thursday at $18.80, or down 81 cents. The company’s 52-week high was $21.35.

Source

A few days after LeBlanc met with TV critics to introduce “Episodes,” set for January, Perry turned up to talk about “Mr. Sunshine,” a surrealistic comedy-drama in which he plays the self-absorbed manager of a small-time sports arena.

“The genesis of the show was all Matthew,” executive producer Mark Firek said. “He had an idea for his character and for the setting and this personal journey that he was about to go on. And he came to us, and we worked on it together and made it this office comedy with him at the center.”

Working with Aaron Sorkin on “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” made Perry think he’d like to try writing, he said. So far, he’s been hanging out in the writers room “all the time” and will sort out the division between writer and actor once shooting starts, he said.

But back to “Friends.” Nobody needed to ask what Jennifer Anniston (Rachel) is up to. So — Cox is working, Kudrow is working and now LeBlanc and Perry are working, too. So what about David Schwimmer (Ross)?

“Do you ever see David, and does he talk to you about his goals?” one questioner wondered.

“I have not seen David in a while,” Perry responded, trying not to laugh, “but I would assume he’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing. You know, he loves directing. He loves the theater. So he’s probably doing a bunch of that lame stuff.”

(For the record, post-”Friends,” Schwimmer has appeared on stage in London, Chicago and New York, voiced a character in the “Madagascar” movies and directed the movie “Run Fatboy Run.” TV viewers have seen him on “30 Rock” and “Entourage.”)

Source

Luckily, she hasn’t had to in a busy post “Friends” career that has seen her become a viable force as an actress and producer in television, Internet and independent film.

“Let’s face it, I was never a great ingenue to begin with,” said Kudrow, now 46. “I always knew I’d have to do either my own stuff or play interesting character roles.”

Kudrow gained fame playing ditzy blonde Phoebe on “Friends” for 10 years. By the time the show ended in 2004, the cast was earning a $1 million dollars each per episode.

This paycheck made Kudrow and her co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox not only the highest paid TV actresses of all time but gave them the luxury of choice in the future.

“That show did nothing but afford us opportunity forever after,” says a grateful Kudrow.

Kudrow’s latest movie is alongside Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone in the independent movie “Paper Man,” which opens in U.S. movie theaters on Friday.

Kudrow plays the surgeon wife to her failed novelist husband (Daniels). While she’s off working, her husband develops a friendship with a teenage girl (Stone). At the same time, he also gets advice from an imaginary childhood superhero (Reynolds).

“This was a better version of the (traditional) wife character,” says Kudrow. “I liked the idea of how one girl’s charming guy is a wife’s huge burden.”

GIVING BACK TO TELEVISION

Film work is just one facet of Kudrow’s busy professional life.

She recently executive produced and appeared in the genealogy TV reality series “Who Do You Think You Are?“. The NBC network has already picked it up for a second season.

It is based on the long running British documentary series of the same name where celebrities journey to trace his or her family tree.

“I’m really proud to have brought the show to the U.S. and that it’s my contribution to television,” says the actress, whose own episode was not without trepidation.

Source.

Kudrow is also busy as executive producer of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, a show in which celebs explore their ancestry. Kudrow told Parade.com‘s Jeanne Wolf that she understands what it takes to keep a relationship together.

Women don’t give up easily.
“When you love someone and when you’re committed, you put up with a lot of things. I think women have a tremendous capacity for patience when they commit to something. The trick with women is when you’ve run all that patience out; they’re done and it’s hard to get them back.”

But guys are winning the age game.
“I know we all want everything to be equal, but it’s just not. Men age well and they are capable of being attractive to women that are a lot younger and it just doesn’t work the other way most of the time. There are exceptions obviously, but you know, in general it’s just not the way it happens.”

Almost following in her dad’s footsteps.
“It was funny to play a surgeon. Originally, I was gonna go to medical school and become a doctor like my father and he said, ‘That’s great.’ Then I said, ‘No, not medical school. I’m just gonna do research.’ And he said, ‘That’s fantastic.’ And then I said, ‘Instead of all that, I’m just gonna go for acting.’ He said, ‘Good for you.’ So he’s like the kind of dad any girl would want — whatever makes you happy.”

How science has made her a better performer.
“The scientific method done correctly doesn’t allow any judgment, no opinions. You can’t have it crowded by too much bias. I approach acting the same way. What you learn about your characters is just information, and you’re not allowed to judge them.”

Remembering the advice she’d like to forget.
“I was told by a teacher, ‘You’re funny, and people either get you or they don’t. So the question is, will you work or not? Who knows? I think there are maybe very few people who get what you’re doing, and those people might employ you. And the rest of the world, I think they’re just going to think you’re f—d up.’ I sometimes wonder how she felt when she saw me on Friends.”

The world isn’t always funny.
“I don’t think I’m always looking for the humor in everything. I used to. There was a point when I was at The Groundlings and I was looking for what’s funny. Usually, I found it was the mean stuff. You had to look for the mean take on things, and the angry take. I didn’t want to live my life like that.”

Rediscovering her past on Who Do You Think You Are?
“The producers sort of made me the guinea pig because they decided I had a good story to tell. There were some things that my father didn’t know and that I didn’t know about. For me, it became a holocaust story uncovering things that relatives suffered that were brutal and also surprising. That’s kind of the key to the show: What we can learn from uncovering our past. I think almost everyone who’s seen it has tried to find out more about their own family tree. They just log onto Ancestry.com and immediately start looking things up.”

Keeping history alive.
“It’s the intimate details of these stories that personalize history and that adds to the impact. I used to feel bad about holding on to things from my past like my Day Runners from the ’80s, and faxes and stuff. I’m not going to feel bad about that anymore because those are all, at some point, potentially important family documents about what I was thinking or feeling at the time. It turns out that everything is a clue when you’re trying to piece together a life from a few hundred years ago.” 

Source.

During the interview, Kudrow shares how researching her own family history, particularly around the Holocaust, on an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” helped her to gain insight into her family dynamics:

“There’s also that aspect of, ‘oh, now I know why my grandmother was the way she was.’ Which was, just a little bit bitter. There had just been so much tragedy in so many areas of her life. Not to mention this really terrifying – this horror that her entire family was just wiped out like that. You know, and that’s who raised my father, and his response to that. And you can see how all these events however far you go back, it really informed how the next generation behaved or experienced the world.”

Kudrow also discusses her pride at broadening the scope of network television with the introduction of the history-focused series:

“It’s something I’ve been afraid to sort of say out loud, but part of it was this secret fantasy that if it’s possible to bring this kind of show to network television which seemed, I have to say, it seemed almost like an impossibility. Then it would be such a, to me, such a huge accomplishment because it’s really, I think it’s enriching, you know? I mean it can’t go all the way over to a documentary series like it is in the UK because after all, it is on a network during primetime, but boy, I think it’s taken what that is on network television a little further along and it makes me proud.”

Source: Tavis Smiley

Gallery & Video Links:
Television Shows > Who Do You Think You Are? > 1.03 – Lisa Kudrow

Video: Who Do You Think You Are? – Part 1
Video: Who Do You Think You Are? – Part 2

The revelation came as she traced her ancestors on the programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ and the actress found that her great-grandmother was ‘killed and burned’ with 900 other Jews caught in the Holocaust during the Second World War, reports express.co.uk.

‘I knew my great-grandmother was murdered but to hear the words ‘killed and burned’ – that’s…urgh. God,’ she said.

Kudrow also found an elderly woman who was a close friend of her grandmother Grunia and spoke of their childhood fear of the Germans.

She was told that in March 1942 Adolf Hitler’s Nazis searched out 900 Jews and forced them to run to the market place. They were led to a deep hole, stripped, lined up and shot from all sides. Each body fell into the pit and the Nazis then poured in oil and set it on fire.

‘These people were no threat, it’s just the ravings of a mad man who decided that Jews didn’t fit into the way he saw the human race. I am glad that I got to see, witness, acknowledge what happened to my family here and pay my respects at their final resting place. That moment is worthwhile,’ said a teary Kudrow.

However, she managed to find the cousin her father remembered, Yuri Barudin, the man who first brought news of the massacre to her family. He was thought to have died but was alive and living close by.

‘I’m so happy that I have something happy to tell my father. They both went through so much and came out the other end to share their good fortune and beautiful families. It’s so fulfilling,’ she added.

The Emmy award-winning actress, who lives in Los Angeles with her French husband Michel Stern and their 12-year-old son Julian, is executive producer of the US version of the popular BBC series.

Source.