40 Details About Friends Only The Live Audience Got To See
Friends was a television phenomenon like no other. It spawned catchphrases, hairstyles, and iconic water-cooler moments (“I, Ross, take thee, Rachel…”). Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and the late, great Matthew Perry became six of the biggest stars of the 1990s. To this day, the show has a massive fandom, but even the most hardcore Friends fans didn’t get to see everything that went on behind the scenes.
1. Reese Witherspoon had no idea what she was doing
When Reese Witherspoon was cast as Rachel’s sister, Jill, on Friends, she wasn’t prepared. At the 2011 Elle Women in Hollywood gathering, she revealed that she’d “panicked” in front of the cameras while filming the hit show.
The actress explained, “It became immediately clear to me that I had no idea what I was doing and I was completely out of my league.” Luckily, Aniston came to her aid – and the two are still close friends.
2. Lisa Kudrow couldn’t play the guitar
Friends fans got a lot of great moments with Phoebe Buffay playing the guitar — in her own, well, unique way. Originally, she was meant to be a great guitar player, but Kudrow disliked that idea; she just couldn’t get the hang of the instrument. The show producers hired a tutor for her, but that didn’t work either.
Kudrow suggested that Phoebe play the bongos instead, but eventually everyone settled on the idea of her character not being good at the guitar. And that led to some great comedy anyway. What would the world be without “Smelly Cat?”
3. One episode was changed because of 9/11
Following the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, there were some subjects that it simply felt wrong to make jokes about on TV. Incidentally, Friends had already filmed a potentially problematic scene before the events of September 11. Thankfully, it was yet to air.
Thus, a scene featuring Chandler making a bomb joke at an airport was cut out and replaced with one about Monica being jealous of another couple. The original scene can still be found online, though.
4. Courteney Cox was just like her character
What does Monica Gellar love more than anything? Cleaning! And it turns out Courteney Cox was just like her character in that respect. Two classic type A clean freaks!
“[Cox] has the neatest dressing room,” show co-creator Marta Kauffman revealed to The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “She even cleans up the other actors’ dressing rooms because she won’t go in there if they are too messy.” Pure Monica.
5. The animals on set were a problem
Marcel the monkey, the chick and the duck, Phoebe's rats, Eddie’s goldfish... The list of unusual pets kept by the Friends characters goes on and on. And perhaps unsurprisingly, these critters caused a few issues on set!
For one thing, Lisa Kudrow was scared of the duck since she had a phobia of birds. And the two monkeys who played Ross’ animal companion Marcel weren’t always cooperative, plus the cast were informed that it wasn’t a good idea to bond with them.
6. Ross stayed the same age for years
Smart Friends fans have noted that Ross appears to stay the same age for far longer than he should. If you watch the show back, you’ll see that in seasons three, four, and five — which cover a period of about three years — Ross says he’s 29 years old.
Of course, there’s always a chance the character was lying in order to appear younger than he was... Or it was just an oversight that the show runners missed!
7. One famous episode happened because of budget cuts
“The One Where No One’s Ready” is one of the most popular episodes of Friends; Jay-Z even spoofed it in a music video once! But if not for the writers having to get creative due to budget cuts, it might never have happened.
Money was so tight that the writers were forced to set one episode entirely in Monica’s apartment, and “The One Where No One’s Ready” was the result. Thank you budget cuts!
8. The actresses always ate salad
Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, and Lisa Kudrow would always eat together while filming Friends. But curiously, they always had the same meal. “We always had the same thing — a Cobb salad,” Cox told The Los Angeles Times in 2010.
“But it wasn’t really a Cobb salad; it was a Cobb salad that Jennifer doctored up with turkey bacon and garbanzo beans and I don’t know what.” The tasty salad recipe recently went viral on TikTok!
9. NBC were afraid of a homophobic backlash
When Carol and Susan got married on Friends, it was the first-ever lesbian wedding to be shown on network television. A historic moment in LGBTQ+ representation, but back then, NBC were afraid of getting complaints. And yet, they were pleasantly surprised...
In 2016 Kauffman told The Hollywood Reporter, “[NBC] put 104 operators on for fear of getting a million phone calls. They got two. A month later, they got the letters, but nobody called.” Plus, all the letters were from just one guy!
10. Monica and Chandler weren’t meant to be together
Can you believe “Mondler” was never supposed to happen? In 2019 co-creator David Crane revealed on the Today show, “We didn’t really know that Chandler and Monica were gonna end up together until even after that episode in London where they wake up in bed together — and the audience went insane.”
The relationship was so popular that, eventually, Monica and Chandler married, and they remain one of the most beloved couples in television history. Could they BE any more made for each other?
11. Jennifer Aniston never liked her famous haircut
Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle on Friends, created by stylist Chris McMillan, was so popular it became known as “the Rachel.” Unfortunately, while the rest of the world was running to the salon and asking for “the Rachel,” Rachel herself hated it.
In 2011 Aniston told Allure magazine, “I love Chris, and he’s the bane of my existence at the same time because he started that damn Rachel, which was not my best look. How do I say this? I think it was the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen.”
12. Carol was replaced after one episode
Have you noticed that when we first see Ross’ ex-wife Carol, she’s played by a different actress? Originally, Carol was played by Anita Barone, but after just one episode, she left and was replaced by Jane Sibbett.
Barone wanted to find a more regular acting role, which the part of Carol wasn’t at the time. However, such was the eventual popularity of Friends that maybe she wishes she’d stuck around!
13. The set designers bought things from thrift stores
Creating Monica’s apartment presented an exciting challenge for the show’s set designers. They wanted her place to look stylish without being unrealistic for what her young character would have been able to afford. So, they visited thrift stores and swap meets to try and find inexpensive things that would fit her style.
“Monica really couldn’t afford a matched set of dining table chairs, but it was meant to be that the character had a really good eye,” set decorator Greg Grande told Entertainment Weekly in 2019.
14. The cast negotiated together for higher pay
During the early days of Friends, the cast weren’t paid equally, with Matt LeBlanc getting the lowest salary of the group. But as the show became more and more popular, and the power of this ensemble cast became more apparent, they wanted their pay to reflect that.
So all six of them teamed up and negotiated a pay rise together — a big one. This had simply never happened with television stars before, and it opened new doors. By the end of the show each of them was getting $1 million per episode.
15. Lisa Kudrow really was pregnant
When Lisa Kudrow became pregnant in real life, the Friends writers decided to simply write it into the show. They had to use some creativity, though, and Phoebe ended up being a surrogate for her brother’s kids.
The cast loved that Kudrow was really expecting and were always feeling her bump and talking to the unborn baby on set!
16. Live audiences weren’t allowed to watch the cliffhangers
Friends was famously filmed in front of a live studio audience. But this posed a problem when there was a huge twist or plot point on the show; the risk of spoilers leaking was just too great. So, there were a few times when bosses had to keep the live audience in the dark.
For example, when Ross’ disastrous wedding to Emily was filmed, the studio audience were all told to leave before Rachel made her surprise appearance so they didn’t know what was going to happen!
17. The man behind one iconic bit of set design got no credit
So much about the Friends sets holds an iconic place in TV history: the purple walls, Joey’s white ceramic dog, that little yellow picture frame on the back of Monica’s apartment door. And what about that French “Jouets” poster right above the television in Monica’s living room? It became iconic, but the man who found it never got his due.
In 2019 designer Greg Grande told Entertainment Weekly, “It’s awesome to think that I put such a fingerprint on that show — and it’s really sad that I can’t get any piece of the action! Somebody owes me, for God’s sakes!”
18. Matt LeBlanc was broke before being cast
Landing their role on Friends was a huge turning point for all of the cast, but perhaps none more so than Matt LeBlanc. Before being cast as Joey Tribbiani, the actor was so broke he even had to do his own dental work!
In 2019 LeBlanc told Conan O’Brien that he was down to $11 before getting the good news, and he “would have starved” without getting the role that changed his life.
19. Phoebe’s twin was a character on another show
Phoebe’s twin sister, Ursula, was a hilarious recurring character on Friends, but she actually existed before Phoebe did! Ursula was the waitress Kudrow was playing on another show, Mad About You, when she was cast on Friends.
In a fun meta move, the show runners decided that they would take Ursula from that other fictional world and have her be Phoebe’s twin on Friends because, well, why not?
20. Bruce Willis appeared on the show after a bet
Fun fact: legendary actor Bruce Willis guest-starred on Friends because he lost a bet to Matthew Perry! Apparently, it was regarding whether or not their movie The Whole Nine Yards would become a box office number one.
Willis lost the bet, so he agreed to appear on Friends, and he donated his whole salary for the show to various charities. Now that’s a pretty nice move from a very “neat guy.”
21. The cast didn’t like the show’s opening
Don’t shoot the messenger, but according to Jennifer Aniston, the cast didn’t love the iconic opening sequence of the show that featured The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You.” A fountain, dancing, rubber ducks... What’s not to love?
“No-one was really a big fan of that theme song,” Aniston revealed on The One Show in 2016. “I don’t mean to say that. We felt it was a little, I don’t know... Dancing in a fountain felt sort of odd, but we did it.”
22. Helen Baxendale’s pregnancy had to be worked around
Helen Baxendale, the actress who played Ross’ wife Emily, was pregnant during some of her most important scenes. As it wouldn’t have made sense for Emily to be suddenly having a baby, the show directors had to carefully hide it.
So, Emily’s dress was altered to hide her bump, and later shots of the betrayed bride showed her in bed, making sure that her tell-tale stomach was not visible on camera.
23. The Etch-a-Sketch features secret messages
Eagle-eyed fans of the show will remember that if you look at the door of Chandler and Joey’s apartment, there’s pretty much always an Etch-a-Sketch there. And often it has a funny or plot-relevant message or image on it. Take Chandler’s frantic attempt to apologize to Joey after kissing his girlfriend Kathy: the Etch-a-Sketch has “I’m sorry” written on it a bunch of times.
Then in season 4, episode 2, the board reads, “Thanks for all your stuff!” — a note from the burglar who locked Joey in the TV unit and stole all their things! Later, when everyone finds out about Monica and Chandler’s relationship, the Etch-a-Sketch has a heart with “CB 4 MG 4ever” inside.
24. Christina Applegate already knew most of the cast
Christina Applegate famously played Rachel’s sister Amy from season nine, but she knew most of the Friends already. In fact, she’d known Matthew Perry since childhood!
“I’ve known [Perry] for 100 years,” Applegate told Today in 2019. “Schwimmer’s amazing, and Lisa and Courteney I’ve known from like, 20-something years prior. It was just a great group, a lot of love there.”
25. Sarah Ferguson was afraid to do her cameo
When the Friends crew filmed in London, they recruited a very special guest star: Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. However, she was incredibly nervous, not least because her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie were massive Friends fans! So Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry proved themselves true gentlemen by helping her relax and learn her lines.
Following the news of Perry’s death in October 2023, Ferguson wrote on social media, "I remember being thrilled to have met a natural talent, comedian, and brilliant actor. It is a tragedy to lose you so early in life, rest in peace dear Matthew... you have given so much joy and laughter to so many."
26. James Michael Tyler really was a barista
Oh, Gunther. James Michael Tyler still makes money from Friends, but he might never have been cast as the lovable Gunther if he hadn’t been a barista in real life!
Michael Tyler might have stayed as a background extra with no lines, but he happened to know how to work an espresso machine. In the end, Tyler appeared in 148 out of 236 Friends episodes.
27. No-one liked Rachel and Joey together
The storyline where Rachel and Joey fall in love was not a popular one, even among the actors. Matt LeBlanc told Vanity Fair in 2012, “It felt wildly inappropriate. That’s how close we all were to the character.”
The actor continued, “I was like, ‘That’s Rachel. She was supposed to be with Ross. Wait a minute.’ Everybody got super-defensive about the whole thing.”
28. There was a hidden dirty joke
Actress Jane Sibbett, who played Carol, once confessed that she snuck in a dirty joke to one of her scenes in Friends. In 2019 she told The Guardian “Ross comes over at an inopportune moment, and I had to telegraph to him that it isn’t a good time.”
“So I removed a little pube from my tongue,” she explained. “That was the only time I pitched something that was really outrageous, and it actually got on air.”
29. Cole Sprouse had a crush on Jennifer Aniston
Cole Sprouse, who later became famous with his twin brother on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, played Ross’ son, Ben. And he confessed that he used to have a crush on one of his co-stars during his time on the show. “I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Jennifer Aniston, which the whole world had at that point,” he told Today in 2019.
The actor added, “I remember blanking on my lines, and having a kind of stage fright when she sat next to me on the couch in one episode.” Awww.
30. Giovanni Ribisi was a different character at first – or was he?
Actor Giovanni Ribisi famously played Frank Jr., Phoebe’s half-brother on her father’s side. Phoebe had never previously met her brother, and she was delighted to find him. But actually, she might have met him before!
You see, in “The One With the Baby on the Bus,” a random guy runs up to Phoebe to retrieve a lost condom. That guy is played by Giovanni Ribisi before Frank Jr. became a character. So in the show’s universe, was “Condom Boy” actually Frank all along?
31. Matt LeBlanc nearly had a breakdown
Fame didn’t come easy for Joey, and it certainly took its toll on Matt LeBlanc. After Friends ended, the actor found himself in a very dark place. "For years and years, I barely left the house," he told The Mirror in 2016. “I was burnt out. I wanted to not have a schedule, not be somewhere. I was in a position to do that.”
“Most actors call their agents and say, ‘What’s going on?’” he continued. “I’d call mine and say, ‘Please lose my number for a few years.’ It was a very dark time. I almost had a nervous breakdown.”
32. Fans were cruel to Lauren Tom
When Ross returns from a work trip with a new girlfriend, Julie, Ross and Rachel fans were outraged. So much so that the actress who played Julie, Lauren Tom, faced a lot of cruelty from fans and from the live audience watching the show.
“I wasn’t prepared for the amount of venom I was about to receive in a live audience where they actually booed my character,” the actress told Today in 2019. “And, of course, I was trying very hard not to get my feelings hurt.”
33. Joey and Monica were originally going to be the main couple
It would have been a very different show if Joey and Monica had hooked up, but that was the original intention. In 2004 David Crane told Matt Lauer in an interview, “Initially we thought the big love interest was Joey-Monica.”
He continued, “This is before we wrote the script, when we were just pitching the series… We didn’t know, when we pitched the show, the idea of Ross and Rachel. That was something we discovered writing it.”
34. NBC’s rules were inconsistent
In 2012 the writers of Friends shared some tidbits about NBC with Vanity Fair. Apparently, the network imposed various rules about the show’s content, but said rules kept changing.
For instance, David Crane remembered, “For the first three years, we could say ‘penis.’ Then we couldn’t say ‘penis.’ Then we could say ‘penis’ again.”
35. LeBlanc and Kudrow wanted their characters together
All the other Friends had paired up, so surely it made sense for Joey and Phoebe to end up together, too? Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the actors, this could-have-been great love story never happened.
LeBlanc told Entertainment Weekly in 2016, “Towards the end we actually pitched the idea that Joey and Phoebe had been having casual sex the entire time.” But no.
36. Janice wasn’t meant to be a recurring character
It’s possible the most frequently quoted line from Friends isn’t from one of the main six characters. Janice and her unforgettable line “OH, MY, GOD!” became a truly iconic part of the hit show — much more so than anyone could have imagined. Maggie Wheeler initially thought her character was just going to be a one-time guest role.
But Wheeler was very good at being the annoying yet lovable Janice — so good, in fact, that the writers kept on inviting her back. Plus, it was even Wheeler who came up with Janice’s hilariously grating laugh.
37. Matt LeBlanc really did injure himself
There are a few Friends episodes where Joey has his arm in a sling after a mishap, but this wasn’t just for comedic effect: Matt LeBlanc actually needed the sling!
In 2012 he recalled to Glamour that he had “popped” his shoulder, and so the writers had written that in as an injury caused by Joey jumping on the bed.
38. Kathleen Turner didn’t have a good time
Kathleen Turner played Charles Bing on Friends, who on the show was labeled a drag queen but after much scrutiny has now been called a trans woman. Aside from the controversy surrounding her character, Turner has had some things to say about her time on set.
In 2014 Turner told Vulture, “I’ll be quite honest... I didn’t feel very welcomed by the cast. I remember I was wearing this difficult sequinned gown — and my high heels were absolutely killing me. I found it odd that none of the actors thought to offer me a seat.”
39. Matthew Perry was struggling with substance abuse
Matthew Perry was already drinking heavily when a 1997 jet ski accident got him addicted to painkillers. It was a very rough time for him, and he still had Friends to think about. Luckily, the cast and crew stood by him, desperately hoping he would get better. Eventually, Perry was able to beat his addictions, after, he later revealed, 15 stints in rehab and around $9 million in recovery costs.
Perry passed away on October 28, 2023, at his Los Angeles home, aged just 54. It came as a shock to the world, an untimely end to a remarkable, though challenging, life.
40. Ross and Rachel nearly didn’t get their happy ending
Ross and Rachel. Can you imagine if these two lovebirds hadn’t ended up together? We sure can’t. Everyone wanted a happy ending for them, but the writers weren’t so sure.
In 2014 David Crane told Entertainment Weekly, “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. But we thought, ‘No, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it.’” And thankfully, they did!