Part of the reason Friends was so popular was the incredible chemistry between the Central
Perk crew.
But just because everything looked swell on screen doesn't mean things went off without
a hitch during filming.
Here are Friends' most awkward behind-the-scenes moments.
Ross and Rachel's endless on-and-off relationship is one of the key hallmarks of the story of
Friends.
Unfortunately, their inevitable fairy tale ending makes it a little harder to accept
the bizarre Season 8 plotline that forces Joey and Rachel to date.
And it seems that fans weren't the only ones disappointed by this arc.
Apparently, the show's stars hated the idea of Rachel and Joey as a couple so much that
they actually teamed together to fight against the show's writers.
And when your six core cast members are forming their own makeshift labor unions because they
hate your writing so much, well, that's when you know things are bad.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Matt LeBlanc admitted that the cast cornered co-creators
David Crane and Marta Kauffman as a group and told them they were adamantly against
Rachel and Joey's relationship.
He explained:
"It felt wildly inappropriate.
That's how close we all were to the character.
I was like, 'That's Rachel.
She was supposed to be with Ross.
Wait a minute.'
Everybody got super-defensive about the whole thing."
But as you'll know from the way things turned out, Crane evidently wouldn't budge.
According to LeBlanc, he liked the uncomfortable aspect of the couple's relationship, and the
fact that it felt like playing with fire.
To him, the whole Ross-and-Rachel thing was always going to happen anyway, and Rachel's
fling with Joey achieved its ultimate goal: keeping Ross and Rachel apart for just long
enough to keep viewers hooked.
Rachel Green might have briefly fallen for the dopey soap actor Joey Tribbiani, but the
weird thing is that Jennifer Aniston initially didn't like Matt LeBlanc at all.
Of course, this could have caused a serious problem for the show, and completely obliterated
the on-screen chemistry that made Friends one of the most watched sitcoms of all time.
Fortunately, her first impression wasn't actually based on LeBlanc's personality.
She was only looking at his résumé.
According to People magazine, some of the show's stars were nervous about LeBlanc's
casting.
On the surface, he seemed like a rough-and-tumble kind of guy.
His dad was a mechanic, and his mother made circuit boards.
His credits included cool guy roles in Bon Jovi and Tom Petty videos, as well as a modeling
gig with Levi's.
Aniston initially wrote him off as being too macho, telling the magazine:
"I was scared of that type of guy."
Of course, you should never judge a book by its cover.
LeBlanc was nothing like he seemed on paper and the pair became friends both on and off
screen.
Aniston told People:
"He thinks it's very funny now.
And actually, he can sit down and comfort me just like Courteney or Lisa could."
Lisa Kudrow has become synonymous with the character of Phoebe Buffay, and for good reason.
But despite her clear knack for comedy, Kudrow initially feared she'd be fired from the sitcom
before the end of her first week.
According to the Mirror, Kudrow was originally meant to play Roz Doyle on Frasier, but director
James Burrows fired her while they were rehearsing for the pilot.
She was eventually replaced by Peri Gilpin.
After Kudrow was cast as Phoebe on Friends, she realized she was working with Burrows
yet again, who was apparently critical of her in the role.
Cue the nerves.
Kudrow explained to Vanity Fair:
"I thought, this is the run-through where Marta and David are going to say, 'This character
doesn't work.
We have to reconceive it.
She's just not part of the group.'"
Fortunately, Kudrow's fears were just fears, and now we have "Smelly Cat."
"You're welcome."
In 2002, the cast of Friends got a historic pay raise.
The group started out earning $22,500 per episode and had been negotiating their contracts
together since Season 3.
During this time, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston, who were making more than the rest
of the cast, took initial pay cuts to even out their salaries.
And it was Schwimmer himself who led the charge on securing better pay for the other cast
members.
During a later interview, Matt LeBlanc said:
"In the beginning, David was perceived as the breakout guy.
He was the Ross of the Ross and Rachel story in the pilot, but he initiated the idea that
if we all stick together, nobody can rattle us, and it worked out really good."
And it definitely worked out nicely for LeBlanc.
He explained:
"I was like, 'Yeah, that sounds good for me.
I'm making the least amount.'"
LeBlanc also recalled that the studio or network would "beat up" on one person during the negotiations,
and the entire group would walk out as a result.
Fortunately, the final negotiations coincided with network upfronts, when NBC shops upcoming
seasons to advertisers.
If the network wanted to sell ads on the highly profitable show, they didn't really have many
bargaining chips.
The cast ended up walking away with a $1 million per episode pay day, a sum Marta Kauffman
still calls "kinda ridiculous."
When Kathleen Turner joined Friends in 2001 as Chandler's transgender parent, Charles
Bing, things didn't really turn out how she expected.
The star was shocked with how the core cast members treated her on set, with her main
gripe seeming to center around a particularly grueling pair of high heels.
In an interview with Vulture, Turner admitted that she didn't feel "very welcome" by the
Central Perk crew.
She said:
"I remember I was wearing this difficult sequined gown, and my high heels were absolutely killing
me.
I found it odd that none of the actors thought to offer me a seat.
Finally it was one of the older crew members that said, 'Get Miss Turner a chair.'
The Friends actors were such a clique, but I don't think my experience with them was
unique."
Of course, wearing painful heels is going to make anyone a little irate, but it's unclear
whether any of the principal cast members noticed how they'd acted towards Turner.
According to her, that's because nobody from the outside mattered to the core six.
Cold.
Ross' pet monkey, Marcel, was one of the weirder plot tangents on Friends, and David Schwimmer
apparently hated his adorable scene partner, too.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Matt LeBlanc admitted his co-star ended up
pretty fed up with his on-screen pet.
"I like the monkey."
"You did?"
"I like animals.
Yeah, the monkey was really cool.
Schwimmer, not so much."
Apparently, Marcel didn't get along too well with Schwimmer either.
According to LeBlanc, the monkey, who's actually a female named Katie, ended up ditching work
one day by climbing up the lights on the sound stage.
She disappeared into the set's inner workings, and it took 30 minutes for the crew to coax
her down with mealworms.
For some reason, however, Katie's diva attitude never ended up tarnishing her reputation.
According to BuzzFeed, she's still acting, and playing a monkey named Ampersand on FX's
upcoming graphic-novel inspired series Y: The Last Man.
Then again, she probably isn't making a million dollars an episode with that one.
Each season of Friends typically ran between 22 and 25 episodes, but Season 10 only had
a brisk 18 episodes.
Why?
Well, if you believe tabloid gossip, it might all boil down to an argument Jennifer Aniston
had with her then-husband Brad Pitt.
According to a rumor that surfaced in the New York Post, Aniston cut things short on
Friends because Pitt was upset that the actress was going back for a final season.
The couple had allegedly wanted to start a family.
A source claimed:
"The rest of the cast wanted one more year and [Aniston] felt a lot of pressure.
But she also wants to keep Brad happy.
So Jennifer said she would do one more year, but insisted on only 18 shows and that filming
would be done by January."
Of course, Aniston's rep denied the New York Post's report.
Uproxx still pointed fingers at the actress, however, and blamed her movie schedule for
the final season's brevity.
And to be fair, Friends was meant to end with Season 9.
According to a Digital Spy interview with executive producer and director Kevin S. Bright,
the final season was a last-minute call.
But was Pitt at fault for its short episode run?
The pair did wind up splitting the year after the finale, so who knows?
Many fans forget that Matthew Perry struggled with alcoholism and Vicodin addiction whilst
filming Friends.
It was so bad that Perry doesn't even remember filming three entire years of the show.
In an interview with BBC Breakfast host Chris Evans, the star admitted that while he wasn't
drinking on set, he was, in his words, "painfully hungover" between Seasons 3 and 6.
According to People magazine, he went to rehab in 1997, but didn't stay sober.
In 2000, he was hospitalized for alcohol-related pancreatitis and wrecked his car.
At one point, Perry was downing 20 to 30 Vicodin pills a day, and then later moved on to drinking
around a quart of vodka a day.
Perry was in serious trouble, but there was little his friends could do to be there for
him.
Matt LeBlanc told People that he tried to intervene.
He explained:
"I tried to talk to him.
There wasn't a response…They need to bottom out on their own."
Marta Kauffman also admitted it was "terrifying" watching someone she cared about in "so much
pain," and Lisa Kudrow told The New York Times that the cast was:
"...just hopelessly standing on the sidelines.
We were hurting a lot."
Fortunately, Perry had a moment of clarity in February 2001.
He began to fear for his life, called his parents asking for help, went to rehab for
the second time while filming the series, and has since maintained his sobriety.
Phoebe Buffay might have had a hit with "Smelly Cat," but Lisa Kudrow really didn't like playing
the guitar.
In a Friends "Final Thoughts" video, the star admitted she struggled to learn the instrument
and asked if her character could play bongos instead.
Executive producer and director Kevin S. Bright revealed that the network hired a guitar teacher
to help the actress master Phoebe's talent, but it just didn't work out like everyone
thought.
As it turned out, it was better for the show if Phoebe was terrible.
"And actually, by making her better, it made the comedy not so good."
The few chords she could play carried Kudrow through 10 years of the sitcom, and gifted
us with some of the show's most iconic songs, including "Smelly Cat"...which she eventually
ended up singing alongside Taylor Swift at a show in Los Angeles in 2015.
As far as guest star relationships go, Jennifer Aniston's marriage to Brad Pitt easily overshadowed
anyone else she dated who made an appearance on her hit sitcom.
But while you might not remember Tate Donovan's brief role on Friends, or his real-life relationship
with Aniston, the actor certainly does, if only for the emotional scars.
According to InStyle, Aniston and Donovan met in 1995 through mutual friends.
By 1997, they were serious enough that he told People magazine that he "definitely"
wanted to get married to the actress.
He even bought her a 9-week-old puppy named Enzo.
But by the time he joined the series for a six-episode arc in 1998, the pair were working
their way through a breakup.
Donovan later told US Weekly that he was "sort of dying inside" while playing his ex's love
interest, Joshua, a hunky personal shopping client Rachel meets while working at Bloomingdale's.
He explained:
"It was just six episodes...We were like, 'Hey, can we not keep doing this?
'Cause this is really painful and tough.'
The people that know that we dated think that we met on Friends.
But in fact we had dated for two years before then, and it was over by the time we were
on Friends together."
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