The actress dialed up the zaniness in the TV reboot of a Terry Gilliam fantasy classic, created by the team behind “What We Do in the Shadows.”
Lisa Kudrow doesn’t particularly like to travel. Raised and based in Los Angeles, she mostly hasn’t had to. Even the quintessential New York sitcom “Friends” was shot in Burbank. “I like L.A.,” she said in a video call from her home there. “I guess vacations are nice, but I feel like I live in a vacation spot so, where am I going? I can watch a video.”
But when the filmmaker Taika Waititi sent her a message on Instagram asking if she would come to New Zealand to star in a series-length adaptation of the 1981 Terry Gilliam movie “Time Bandits,” she said yes. It was a six-month commitment, but in one of the few places on Earth Kudrow had always wanted to visit. And, as she said with a laugh, “No one’s putting me in a Hobbit movie.”
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Fair enough, though there are bigger departures from Middle-earth than “Time Bandits,” a 10-part adventure-fantasy based on a movie about time traveling dwarfs. The series, which debuted Wednesday on Apple TV+, puts a new spin on the beloved film — an ambitious task, given the movie’s bona fides and cult status. The original was written by Gilliam and his fellow Monty Python player Michael Palin, and it starred the likes of John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall and Ian Holm.
The new version, created by Waititi and his frequent collaborators Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris, stars Kudrow as the makeshift leader of the bandits, Penelope, who is perturbed by the arrival of a new member, a history-obsessed boy named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) who accidentally joins them after a portal opens up in his bedroom. Kudrow leads an ensemble cast; Waititi plays the ostensibly benevolent Supreme Being, from whom the bandits have stolen a map of the time portals, and Clement plays Pure Evil, who can’t even say his cosmic nemesis’ name without gagging.
For those who still associate Kudrow, 60, with her most famous role, the daffy Phoebe Buffay of “Friends,” “Time Bandits” sees the actress reprise her well-honed comedic talents — she has a knack for reaction shots and unexpected line deliveries, and for playing off blonde Valley Girl stereotypes. (She herself grew up in the Valley, in Tarzana.) Her characters can be as cutting as they are quirky, and just as memorable as Phoebe. See: the ditzy-but-creative Michele in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” or the thirsty former sitcom star Valerie Cherish in HBO’s “The Comeback.”
It was partly that legacy of indelible characters that the director Olivia Wilde had in mind when she approached Kudrow about a role in her 2019 high school comedy “Booksmart.” Wilde said she was honored that Kudrow said yes.
“People feel excited to see what she’s going to make because she doesn’t need to work so when she makes something it feels like she chooses only the most interesting things,” Wilde said.
