Ursula Buffay

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Right, okay.

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Ursula Buffay

Gender

Female

Occupation

Waitress
Pornographic actress
Governor of New York

Relatives

Frances (adoptive grandmother)
Frank Buffay (father)
Lily Buffay (adoptive mother)
Phoebe Abbott (biological mother)
Lily's second husband (stepfather)
Mrs. Buffay (stepmother)
Phoebe Buffay (twin sister)
Frank Buffay Jr. (half-brother)
Alice Knight Buffay (half-sister-in-law)
Mike Hannigan (brother-in-law)
Frank Buffay Jr. Jr. (nephew)
Leslie Buffay (niece)
Chandler Buffay (niece)

Relationships

Joey Tribbiani (ex-boyfriend)
Malcolm (ex-boyfriend)
Eric (ex-fiance)
Ira (ex-boyfriend)

Information

First appearance

The One With Two Parts, Part 1

Last appearance

The One With The Halloween Party

Number of episodes

8

Portrayed by

Lisa Kudrow

Ursula Pamela Buffay is a fictional character appearing on the two sitcoms Mad About You and Friends. She is portrayed by Lisa Kudrow, who also portrayed her identical twin sister and one of the six main characters on Friends, Phoebe.

Ursula originally appeared as a ditzy waitress on Mad About You, working at Paul and Jamie's favorite New York City restaurant, Riff's. When Lisa Kudrow was cast as Phoebe, who also lives in New York City, producers decided to have the character cross over into Friends.

History

Ursula and her twin sister Phoebe were the result of a sexual relationship between Phoebe Abbott, Frank Buffay and Lily Buffay. A scared Phoebe Abbott wasn't ready to be a mother, so she gave them to Lily after giving birth. Lily adopted both twins and she and Frank raised them together. Later Frank abandoned Lily and the twins and Lily married another man. Then Lily's husband went to prison, and Lily committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Ursula went into care while Phoebe ended up on the streets. Ursula also broke many things of Phoebe's which is mentioned in The One with the Two Parts.

On Mad About You

In Mad About You, Ursula was a particularly inept waitress, often forgetting orders entirely. Her character was more fully developed in Friends "as something of an antagonist or evil twin".

On the last episode of Mad About You, it was revealed that Ursula would become the Governor of New York in the future.

On Friends

Ursula often appeared cruel and hostile to twin Phoebe, who was still upset by the things Ursula did to her when they were young, for example, throwing her Judy Jetson thermos under a bus, accidentally breaking her collarbone and stealing her first boyfriend back in junior high. This drove a wedge between the sisters, and the estrangement continued into adulthood. Although Phoebe ended up homeless by her mid-teens, following the various deaths/abandonments/imprisonments of their parents, Ursula apparently did not. How the sisters came to be separated as minors was never revealed.

Ursula dated Joey in "The One With Two Parts". Naturally, Phoebe became worried. Ursula dumped Joey shortly after by not talking to him and avoiding meeting him. Phoebe pretended to be Ursula to break up with Joey gently, but was found out nonetheless.

In "The One With The Jam", Ursula's stalker Malcolm followed Phoebe by mistake.

It was revealed in "The One With The Jellyfish" that Ursula had always known the truth about her and Phoebe's parentage. She told Phoebe she had read their adoptive mother's suicide note which revealed the identity of their birth mother, Phoebe Abbott. When Phoebe asked to see the note, she showed Phoebe one that she had hastily written up. In Ursula's word, her version "got the gist" of the original suicide note, which she had apparently lost in the interim. Ursula also sold Phoebe's birth certificate to a Swedish runaway, as revealed in "The One Where They All Turn Thirty"; as a result, Phoebe did not know what her middle name was while Ursula's was "Pamela".

In "The One With Joey's Bag", Phoebe told Ursula their grandma had just died, but Ursula thought she died 5 years ago and had already made peace with it, so wouldn't go to her memorial service, plus Ursula had a concert to go.

In "The One Where Chandler Can't Cry", it was revealed that Ursula works in the pornography industry, using her sister's first name so she was credited as Phoebe Buffay. She appeared in such films as "Buffay the Vampire Layer", "Sex Toy Story 2", "Lawrence of a Labia" (an actual adult film title), and "Inspect Her Gadget". Phoebe paid her back by taking all her checks from the porno film company, as the checks were addressed to "Phoebe Buffay".

In "The One With The Halloween Party" Ursula and her fiancé, Eric (played by Sean Penn) attended a Halloween party thrown by Monica and Chandler. Phoebe discovered that Ursula had been lying to her fiancé claiming that she was a teacher at the Top Secret School for the Children of Spies, that she was in the Peace Corps, saying "It wasn't a town when I got there, but it was a town when I left" and also that she didn't smoke and was a part of a church group. Phoebe revealed this to Eric upon which he broke up with Ursula and began dating Phoebe in the following episode "The One With The Stain". However they soon broke up because Eric had sex with Ursula mistaking her for Phoebe.

Trivia

In the episode "The One With Two Parts, Part 1", the characters Jamie Buchman and Fran Devanow from Mad About You walk into Central Perk and confuse Phoebe with Ursula. Since Ursula is naturally forgetful, Jamie writes off Phoebe's genuine ignorance of who Jamie is as one of Ursula's quirks.
In another crossover with Mad About You, Jamie causes a city-wide power blackout in New York City in "Pandora's Box", and the effects of the blackout are seen in the Friends episode, "The One with the Blackout". And a blackout - which may or may not have been the same one - also occurred in the episode "Birthday in the Big House" of the short-lived NBC sitcom Madman of the People. All 3 episodes originally aired during the evening of November 3, 1994, alongside a Seinfeld episode which did not incorporate the blackout premise.
In "The One With The Halloween Party", Phoebe tells Ursula's fiancé, Eric, that she is a minute younger than Ursula.
Ursula appears to be shorter than Phoebe.