Lisa Kudrow has claimed that her late mother "woke everybody up" at the moment she died — but bafflingly, her family weren't in the same home at the time. Known worldwide as Friends' free-spirited Phoebe Buffay, Lisa has shared a personal story about her mum, Nedra Stern, who died in 2020 — and what she believes may have been a sign from the other side.
The revelation has an uncanny link to one of Phoebe's most memorable plots. In The One with the Cat, she becomes convinced a stray cat is hosting the soul of her dead mother.
Eerie Timing of Death
She told Mayim Bialik — best known for her turn in The Big Bang Theory as neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler — that something odd happened after her mum died. Lisa revealed on Mayim Bialik's Breakdown podcast: "So, okay, when she passed away, my brother was up when he got the call."
"It was like 2:30, like almost 3:00 in the morning. My father was up when he got the call. My husband was up. She loved my husband. My sister and her husband, their alarm went off in their bedroom."
She went on: "Everything's on his phone. He was like, 'Breach, master bedroom. I don't see a breach', like, nothing happened. And my sister, who could be really unnerved by an alarm going off and wake her up, was fine, calm, not scared."
She continued: "I woke up because my brother called me. So after she passed away, they're exchanging these stories, and everyone is a little, 'Isn't it weird, though, that I was up?' Isn't it weird that you had that alarm?' And I'm saying it's not weird at all. She flew around and woke everybody up when she passed. I don't think that's weird at all, except she didn't wake me up."
Mysterious 'MOM' Text
While putting together a funeral slideshow, Lisa says she was quietly scrolling through photos and answering texts — not speaking aloud — when something unusual caught her eye.
She explained: "And then I get another text and I open it up, and it's as if I've already responded. There's some writing in the box, message box. And, like, I didn't write that."
"It said in all caps, 'M-O-M', no cursor and no suggestion, Mommy? But I'm not noticing that. I'm just saying, 'I didn't write that'. Delete, delete, delete. And answer them because I'm busy. I've got a task to do. Don't have time for a quirky phone."
She went on: "And then another text. 'What? M-O-M all caps. I didn't write that'. Delete. Delete. Delete. And I'm answering. I'm still not connecting. And then I think it happened one more time. I went, 'Why is this? Oh, because I'm thinking about my mom'. I'm doing that, but I'm not speaking."
Days later, while she was spending time with husband Michel Stern and a friend, the conversation turned to tech glitches. Michel said his phone had been "weird" lately — and Lisa told them she'd been noticing similar things.
Once Lisa had described the "MOM" incident, she said her friend responded by telling her: "Lisa, your mom texted you", with Lisa adding "from the beyond".
