17 little-known facts about ‘Friends’ even fans might not know

Now one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood, Aniston was still new to acting when the pilot of “Friends” was filmed. 

In 2013, Aniston told Us Weekly that she was the last of the six main cast members to be added to the series. She also said she was asked to sit out of the main cast photos for the majority of the shoot because producers did not know if she would stay on as Rachel.

Aniston proved integral to the cast and went on to win an Emmy for her performance as Rachel Green.

“Friends” cocreator and executive producer Marta Kauffman explained to The Hollywood Reporter that a lot of aspects of the show changed as natural chemistry developed between cast members.

“You set out to do things, and then actors come in and they breathe life into it, and it’s not quite what you imagined it was going to be,” Kauffman said.

For instance, Monica (Courteney Cox) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) were only supposed to get together briefly before she was set to end up with Joey (Matthew LeBlanc). But when Monica and Chandler did get together on screen, viewers responded so enthusiastically to the pairing that the Joey and Monica plotline was discarded.

“We were stunned,” Kauffman said. “So that’s when we sort of went, ‘Huh, guess this is going in a different direction.'”

Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Aniston) may have become the quintessential will-they-won’t-they couple, but the show’s cocreator David Crane always knew the two would end up together.

Even when looking at alternative endings, he said it seemed impossible for him and Kauffman to end the show with Ross and Rachel completely broken up.

“We did talk about, with Ross and Rachel, a gray area of where they aren’t together, but we hint there’s a sense that they might be down the road,” Crane told Entertainment Weekly.

“But we thought, ‘No, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it.’ It’s the nature of our show. It’s not a show about grays. Let’s deliver not just what the audience wants, but what we want, which was to see them finally together,” he added.

“Friends” director James Burrows had such a good feeling about the show’s success that he decided to take the cast to Las Vegas before the show premiered and their careers took off.

“I took them to Vegas,” Burrows told Us Weekly. “I had me and six of them and I said — I don’t know why I said this — I said, ‘This is your last shot at anonymity. Once the show comes on the air, you guys will never be able to go anywhere without being hounded.’ I knew the show had a chance to really take off.”

In a joint interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kudrow (who played Phoebe Buffay) and LeBlanc shared that they had pitched an ending to the producers where Phoebe and Joey were revealed to have been sleeping together throughout the series.

“Towards the end we actually pitched the idea that Joey and Phoebe had been having casual sex the entire time,” LeBlanc said. “We’d go back and shoot all the historical scenes and just before a moment that everyone recognizes, there’s Joey and Phoebe coming out of a broom closet together.”

He said producers passed on this plotline. 

Kauffman spoke about working with Cox in a 1995 issue of The Los Angeles Times, noting the similarities Cox shared with her character, Monica.

“Let’s face it, she’s adorable and intelligent and really together. She is Monica,” Kauffman said.

“She has the neatest dressing room. She even cleans up the other actors’ dressing rooms because she won’t go in there if they are too messy,” she added. 

The famous episode “The One Where No One’s Ready” is filmed entirely in Monica’s apartment as the friends struggle to make it out the door to Ross’ museum function. 

And, on the television special “Friends: Final Thoughts,” the producers revealed that the episode was restricted to Monica’s apartment due to budget cuts. They couldn’t afford multiple filming locations. 

The episode is so notable that Jay-Z later parodied it in his “Moonlight” music video.

In a 2012 interview with Vanity Fair, cocreators Crane and Kauffman expressed their struggle to keep up with the network’s constantly changing rules.

“For a long time, we couldn’t show a condom wrapper,” Kauffman said.

“The rules kept changing,” Crane added. “For the first three years, we could say ‘penis.’ Then we couldn’t say ‘penis.’ Then we could say ‘penis’ again.”

During seasons three, four, and five of “Friends” Ross (Schwimmer) references being 29 years old, which means that he did not age for three years on the show.

Although it’s probably just a writing goof that was overlooked, perhaps Ross just lied about his age because he was insecure about turning 30.

Despite getting big names like Bruce Willis, Robin Williams, and Julia Roberts to guest-star on the show, Kauffman and Crane still regret the fact that they couldn’t find a way to fit Justin Timberlake into “Friends.” 

“We got a call that Justin Timberlake wanted to do the show,” Kauffman said. Crane said Timberlake was “lovely” to meet, but the two couldn’t think of a good part for him.

“My kids were furious,” Kauffman said. “They wanted to kill me.”

Often dubbed “The Rachel,” a short haircut with full-bodied layers became a huge trend after Aniston styled her hair that way on “Friends.”

“I was not a fan of the ‘Rachel.'” Aniston told Glamour in 2015. “That was kind of cringe-y for me.”

The actor said she wasn’t even able to style her hair on her own — she had to rely on her hairstylist to do it for her.

Warren Littlefield, the president of NBC from 1991 until 1998, said that the character of Ross was created specifically for Schwimmer.

“Marta and David early on were big fans of David Schwimmer and really wrote the character of Ross with Schwimmer in mind,” Littlefield told the Emmys in a now-deleted post.

But, Schwimmer almost skipped on reading for the part. 

“At the time, David was thinking, ‘You know what. I’m just going to go back and do theater.’ But his agent doggedly pursued him to read the script and come back from Chicago to read for the role,” he added.

During payment negotiations for the third season of “Friends,” the six stars worked as a team to get equal pay to the tune of a reported $75,000 per episode.

By the end of the series, they reportedly each earned $1 million per episode. 

“You were wearing an appropriate Phoebe Buffay — like a white linen, hippie shirt, and you had a bunch of seashells and necklaces on,” Aniston recalled to Kudrow in a 2020 Variety feature. “And you had your hair pulled up in two little clips, and you had these little blond tendrils.”

Kudrow said she was still trying to get into character even though she already had the role. 

Aniston said she also remembers Cox’s table-read outfit, “a pink baby tee with a white trim.”

In a 2012 interview with Glamour, LeBlanc said he once injured his shoulder on set and it had to be written into the show.

“The commando episode [“The One Where No One is Ready”] was the week I dislocated my shoulder and I had to go to the hospital,” LeBlanc said. “They wrote that in, I remember, as Joey jumping on the bed.”

On “The One Where Everybody Finds Out,” when Phoebe sees Monica and Chandler undressing each other, Phoebe says, “My eyes! My eyes!” 

Kudrow actually asked for Perry’s permission before mimicking his character’s style with that line.  

“That’s how Matthew Perry said things. I actually asked his permission before we shot it,” the actor said in the Variety feature, speaking of that scene. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the rehearsals, but I’m saying ‘My eyes! My eyes!’ the way you do. So I just need to know that that’s OK with you. If not, I’ll say it a different way. And he was like, ‘Yeah, go for it.'”

Aniston added that she felt that “Matthew required us to ask permission when we borrowed Chandler’s cadence.”

Although rumors of a “Friends” reboot regularly swirl around the internet, Kauffman has frequently dispelled the idea of doing a continuation of the show she helped create.

“The show is about that time in your life when your friends are your family — that’s what the show was about,” Kauffman said.

She said she felt that once Monica and Chandler started their own family and left the apartment during the finale, the story had finally moved on beyond the characters.

This story was originally published on September 26, 2018, and most recently updated on September 27, 2024.

All 10 seasons of “Friends” are currently available to stream on HBO Max:

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