The cast didn't want Rachel and Joey to get together any more than you did.
The premise of Friends was pretty basic, really – six young twenty-somethings hanging out in a Manhattan coffee shop apartments talking about love, life, careers and friendship. However, the chemistry of the group and the solid writing catapulted the sitcom into the stratosphere. Friends was in the top ten throughout its ten seasons, hitting the number one spot in its eighth year.
When its finale rolled around in 2004 it earned the title of having the most watched television episode of the entire 2000s decade. The series was nominated for 62 Emmy awards in its run, and it’s still extremely popular today. Here’s some behind the scenes dish and dirt you may not know about the beloved show.
"It felt wildly inappropriate," Matt LeBlanc admitted to Vanity Fair in 2012. "Everybody got super-defensive about the whole thing. We went to David and Marta as a group and said, 'We're really concerned about this.
The cast of six was originally meant to be four.
It doesn't feel right. We have a problem with it.'" Right there with you, Matt.
There were a few titles before they settled on 'Friends'
In the early stages, Friends was going to focus on Monica, Rachel, Ross and Joey, with Phoebe and Chandler conceived only as supporting characters.
Sometimes simpler is better, but that doesn’t mean everything starts out that way. Before Friends became Friends it was originally a pilot called Insomnia Cafe.
Having been turned down twice for the role of Joey, Hank Azaria ended up playing Phoebe's scientist boyfriend David.
Then the name was changed to Friends Like Us, and Across the Hall was considered. Next it was changed to Six of One, before finally settling on one simple word that encapsulated it all, Friends.
Before the show had been cast, Monica and Joey were intended to be the central couple.
The one who she should really have ended up with instead of Mike.
The real address of the Friends' apartment, as used in the exterior shots, is 90 Bedford Street in Manhattan's West Village.
Although that was swiftly abandoned after the pilot, we got a glimpse of their dynamic in 'The One With The Flashback' where Joey mistakes Monica's offer of lemonade for an invitation to sex.
Remember that guy who accidentally threw a condom into Phoebe's guitar case and then ran back to get it?
If you visit today, you'll find an adorable restaurant called The Little Owl and lots of apartments you can't afford.
He seemed familiar, right?
Phoebe was originally conceived as a goth girl.
That was Giovanni Ribisi, who later starred as Phoebe's half-brother Frank – we like to think it was Frank with the condom too, but he and Phoebe had no reason to recognise each other at the time.
A subplot involving Monica and Chandler being interrogated by airport security was pulled at the last minute.
That version of the role was offered to Janeane Garofalo, who passed.
The scenes were pulled from season eight's The One Where Rachel Tells Ross', because the episode was due to air a few weeks after 9/11. The episode aired with a hastily filmed replacement plot involving the pair trying to get an upgrade.
The refrigerators in both apartments really worked.
The scenes have now been made available to watch on YouTube, and while they're really funny, you can definitely see how badly they would have played at the time.
THE CAST COULD HAVE GONE IN SO MANY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
Fittingly, Monica's was always well stocked with drinks for the cast and crew, while Joey's was generally empty.
There are always a lot of actors up for TV roles, and with six main characters there was plenty of talent that almost landed a role on friends. Jon Favreau and Jon Cryer were considered for Chandler.
ROSS WAS WRITTEN FOR DAVID SCHWIMMER
Kathy Griffin, Ellen DeGeneres and Jane Lynch were on the short list for Phoebe, and Tea Leoni was up for Rachel. Courteney Cox was initially offered the role of Rachel but requested Monica instead because she thought she was the stronger character.
While some of the roles were open and auditioned for, the newly divorced, slightly neurotic, paleontologist Ross was the first to be cast because it was written for David Schwimmer specifically.
THEY SHOT IN FRONT OF A LIVE AUDIENCE
Executive producer Kevin Bright had worked with David before and used his voice to develop the character.
Like most sitcoms, Friends was shot in front of a live audience with as many as 300 people. Each episode took about five hours to shoot, which included 20 minutes between scenes to change the sets.
LISA KUDROW WAS NOT INTO PHOEBE’S GUITAR PLAYING
The only time they filmed on a closed set was for cliffhangers like “The One With Ross’s Wedding.”
Lisa Kudrow had to learn how to play the guitar to take on the role of Phoebe, but she didn’t like it and suggested that Phoebe play the bongos instead.
LISA KUDROW THOUGHT CHANDLER WAS GAY
She eventually decided that Phoebe would only know a few chords anyway so she found a happy medium.
When Lisa first heard Matthew Perry read for Chandler she was surprised because she, like many other people, had assumed his character was gay. Many people assumed that his sexual orientation would eventually become part of the plot. However, the writers had other plans all along.
THE CHARACTER URSULA STARTED ON MAD ABOUT YOU
In 1997 David Crane said: “No, Chandler isn’t gay. Nor will he be gay
The character Phoebe was created as a twin sister for a reason, because when Lisa Kudrow was cast on Friends she already had a role playing Ursula, the airheaded waitress on Mad About You.
BRUCE WILLIS DIDN’T GET PAID FOR HIS ROLE ON THE SHOW BECAUSE OF A LOST BET
The producers encouraged her to do both shows and fixed her recognizability by deciding that the characters would be identical sisters.
Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis starred together on The Whole Nine Yards and disagreed about how well the film would do. Matthew thought it would hit number one at the box office, Bruce did not.
THE OPENING SEQUENCE WAS NOT SHOT IN NEW YORK
It did, and Bruce had bet his wages for guest starring on Friends, so he had to donate them to charity.
THE APARTMENT NUMBER CHANGED DURING THE SERIES
This might not be a total shocker, but despite how much the fountain in the opening credits looks like the Pulitzer Fountain in Central Park, the shoot actually took place on the Warner Brother’s lot in Burbank.
When the show started, Monica’s apartment was number five and Chandler’s was four, but then they realized that this didn’t make sense because they weren’t on the ground floor. (Think about all those balcony scenes.) They then changed the numbers to 20 and 19 instead.
COURTENEY COX’S PREGNANCY WAS NOT WRITTEN INTO THE SHOW
Did you notice?
Lisa Kudrow’s real life pregnancy was written into the show as her character being a surrogate to her brother’s triplets, but Courteney’s was not. It was already established that Monica and Chandler could not have children naturally, so they hid the pregnancy with costumes and props.
THE CAST TOOK A GROUP TRIP BEFORE THE SHOW AIRED
In real life, the actress and her then-husband David Arquette had difficulty conceiving. Courtney had to film the episode where Rachel gives birth to Emma shortly after suffering a miscarriage.
Before the show aired, director James Burrows took the cast on a trip to Las Vegas because he sensed it would be their “last shot at anonymity.
THE CAST WOULD HUDDLE BEFORE SHOOTING EVERY EPISODE
Once the show comes on the air, you guys will never be able to go anywhere without being hounded.” He was right.
The cast of Friends became friends in real life, and they had the habit of huddling before shooting every episode. David Schwimmer has discussed how emotional he got doing it for the finale.
JENNIFER ANISTON ALMOST LEFT BEFORE THE LAST SEASON
“I started to lose it in this ritual that we had before the show, which is just a group hug, kind of get in a little circle, right before we come out. And that was the moment I was dreading for a long time because I knew that moment of just looking at everyone in their eyes, and saying ‘Have a good show,’ and knowing that was the last time we were going to be able to be in our little circle.”
There could not have been a proper season of Friends without one of the six characters, but apparently Jennifer Aniston was considering not returning for the final season. “I had a couple issues that I was dealing with,” she has said.
THE CAST WAS THE FIRST TO NEGOTIATE A SALARY AS A GROUP
“I wanted it to end when people still loved us and we were on a high. And then I was also feeling like, ‘How much more of Rachel do I have in me?’”
It’s not uncommon for different actors to pull different wages on a TV show, but the cast of Friends wasn’t having that. They reportedly all started out making around $22,000 per episode but this started to deviate by the second season.
EVERYONE’S AN ARQUETTE
In 1997 they all refused to work until they were paid an equal $100,000 per episode each, and by the final season they were each earning $1 million per episode.
A BIT ABOUT GUNTHER
In homage to Courteney Cox’s marriage to David Arquette, the opening credits of the episode “The One After Vegas” rolled with everyone taking on the name Arquette.
Everybody’s favorite lovesick barista was nameless until half way through season two. The actor who played him, James Michael Tyler, started out as an extra and apparently got the job as he was the only one who knew how to work the espresso machine.
The Friends have pretty much all kissed each other.
It wasn’t until episode 33 that Gunther had a line in the script, which was “yeah,” and he ended up appearing in 152 episodes.
One hard-working Tumblr fan did some serious research on this, confirming that the only two characters who have never locked lips in any way are Monica and Phoebe – everyone else has, if you include off-screen moments and hypothetical 'what if?' episodes.