Actress Lisa Kudrow speaks onstage at the Love And Other Impossible Pursuits press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel on September 16, 2009 in Toronto.Jason Merritt
Writer/director Don Roos and star Lisa Kudrow have done several projects together, including The Opposite of Sex (1998), the current internet series Web Therapy - Kudrow plays a bored therapist who limits her practice to three-minute e-chats - and now their new film Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, where Kudrow is an angry ex-wife whose husband left her for Natalie Portman.
At a press conference for the film on Wednesday, Kudrow explained why she keeps working for someone who loves to cast her as "the worst human being in the world."
"It's fun to play," she said, "especially if it's a comedic horrible woman. I did that for years with The Groundlings [an LA troupe] but no one noticed until I played a nice, chirpy girl on Friends. It's more fun to play somebody who's not adorable."
Roos chimed in: "There's just something magic about working with someone who gets you. I find Lisa very inspiring. Her voice is in my head. Now we spend as much time together as two people possibly can who have no sexual interest in one another."
Asked if she felt like an outsider at first, Portman answered, "They were very friendly, it's not like they cut me out, like I was the new kid at school."
"Oh, we made fun of her a lot, but behind her back," Roos joked. "We'd watch her dailies and roar."
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Johanna Schneller