A new book focused on the iconic comedy reveals unknown details about its creation and history
Next September it will be 25 years since the premiere of Friends (1994-2004) in the United States, but there are still curiosities to discover about the series. The book Generation Friends by Saul Austerlitz, which will be published on September 17, reveals unknown details about the creation and history of the iconic comedy.
The magazine has advanced several excerpts from this work, among which stands out one that reveals why Jennifer Aniston was close to abandoning the production that launched her to fame in the first season.
The casting team wanted the actress to play Rachel Green, but she had already recorded several episodes of another sitcom called Muddling Through. If this series had been successful, Friends would have lost one of its leads during its first season. Doubtfully, CBS premiered it on Saturday nights in the summer of 1994. NBC producer Warren Littlefield talked to Preston Beckman, vice president of programming, asking him to do whatever he could to make it a flop. "Kill her," he said, referring to the other Aniston series.
The method that the chain that issued Friends used was counterprogramming. In the same time slot on Saturdays they premiered several television movies that adapted the romantic novels of Danielle Steel. These contents probably would have achieved a larger audience on another day of the week, but the objective was to overshadow Muddling Through so that it would be canceled and filming would not continue. They succeeded and this allowed the continuity of Rachel in Friends.
An older character
Saul Austerlitz's book tells the story of what he was about to be the gang's seventh friend. NBC commissioned the pilot to Marta Kauffman and David Crane, but among the suggestions that the network made to the creators of the series was that they include an older character in the cast. The company was concerned that without him the fiction would not capture the mature audience. They proposed that someone meet Ross (David Schwimmer), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), and the company at Central Perk to give them advice.
Kauffman and Crane agreed and tried to bring in a character called Pat the cop. They modified the script and there was even a casting to choose their interpreter, but they hated the change. They agreed with NBC to get rid of this idea in exchange for promising to give importance to the plots to the parents of the six protagonists and to look for guest stars to attract an older audience.
Other Friends curiosities
In the advances of Generation Friends that the magazine has published, other curiosities of the gestation of the comedy are also revealed. They offered the role of Monica Geller to Janeane Garofalo (Reality Bites) before Courteney Cox snapped it up, thinking the character would have strong maternal instincts and be a tougher, more sarcastic woman.
Another detail that would have changed Friends as we know it is that at first its creators considered that the couple that would star in the central romance of the production would be made up of Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Monica.
