Turns out even Conan O’Brien felt like he was stuck in second gear.
The former late night host got candid during a conversation with ex-girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, whom he dated from 1988 to 1993, saying that he found himself jealous of the late Matthew Perry when she first starting filming Friends.
“You started doing that show,” he said on his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend July 21, “and you called me up, and you were raving about Matthew.”
“And you were saying, ‘He’s so funny,’ And there was part of me that was jealous,” he explained. “Like, I was, ‘OK…I make you laugh pretty hard.’ And you were like, ‘No, you don’t understand. This guy’s really [funny].'”
And while the 61-year-old may have initially been jealous, he soon found that Lisa was spot-on when complimenting Matthew, adding, “And then I was watching him and going, ‘Yup.'”
While Lisa, 60, went on to reassure Conan that he is “one of the funniest people” she knows, she did continue praising Matthew, especially for what he brought to the character of Chandler Bing.