20 Things You Didn't Know About Friends

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1. Friends was originally titled Insomnia Cafe. Before the final title was settled upon, the show was also known as Once Upon a Time in West Village, Across the Hall, Six of One, and Friends Like Us. Lez be honest, nobody would have watched it if it had any of those titles.
2. Thousands of actors applied to audition for the six main roles, but only 75 actually read for each part. The role of Ross was written specifically for David Schwimmer. Courteney Cox auditioned for Rachel but convinced producers that she was better suited to play Monica. Jennifer Aniston also auditioned for both Rachel and Monica and was cast as the former. Producers were hesitant to hire Matt LeBlanc after he made Joey dim and heartfelt during his audition, but NBC insisted they cast him. The characters of Phoebe and Chandler were originally intended to play supporting roles in the group's dynamics, but they were added to the core group once Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry were cast.
3. Jon Cryer of Two and Half Men auditioned for Chandler via video, as he was in New York at the time, but the tape did not arrive in Los Angeles in time for him to be considered.
4. Chandler was originally going to be gay, while the writers also intended to have Monica and Joey romantically involved with one another.
5. The cast filmed the opening water fountain sequence at 4am one morning. They were asked to lip sync to the show's theme song, "I'll Be There" by the Rembrandts, but as the song had not been recorded, the actors were simply given the lyrics.
6. For all ten seasons, the six stars ensured that they were treated as an ensemble cast and that one actor did not dominate over the others. They negotiated their salaries collectively, and Aniston and Schwimmer took pay reductions so that all six cast members received the same salary. (That salary for each actor, by the way, started at $22,500 per episode in season one and ended at $1 million per episode for the final two seasons.)
7. The show's massive popularity has manifested itself in various cultural phenomena. Aniston's hairstyle in the first season was nicknamed "The Rachel" for her character and is still imitated worldwide. Joey's pick-up line, "How you doin'?" is now commonly used in Western English slang. The show also popularized the term "friend zone" and the usage of "so" as an intensifier. Additionally, television couples who engage in on-and-off romances are often called the "Ross and Rachel" of the show.
8. NBC was initially reluctant to have the gang's hangout spot be a coffee shop, as they considered it too "hip." Central Perk has since inspired numerous real-world coffee shops around the world.
9. The network also insisted that the characters were too young and asked the writers to add an older character to provide guidance and advice to the friends. The writers obliged and added Pat the Cop, but NBC eventually relented and the character was dropped before the pilot was filmed.
10. Tom Selleck portrayed Monica's on-and-off boyfriend Richard throughout the show's run. While filming his entrances, the audience would usually greet him with a standing ovation, rendering the footage unusable and prompting excessive re-shoots without the studio audience.
11. The show is often credited as depicting the first portrayal of gay marriage on mainstream American television. "The One with the Lesbian Wedding" aired in 1996, and though NBC expected the episode to generate controversy and negative press, only two network affiliates (one in Texas, the other in Ohio) refused to air the episode, and the network only received four telephone complaints after the episode was broadcast.
12. James Michael Tyler, who plays Gunther, was originally just an extra but was kept on because he was the only one who knew how to work the set's cappuccino machine. Over the course of the ten seasons, Gunther became one of the series' most memorable recurring characters.
13. Kudrow originally played the role of Ursula, an inept waitress who frequently forgets orders, on Mad About You. The series' creators liked the character so much that they made her Phoebe's twin sister in Friends.
14. Bruce Willis' two-episode arc on Friends was a result of a bet he made with Perry on the set of The Whole Nine Yards. As per the bet's conditions, Willis appeared free of charge.
15. Aniston and LeBlanc objected to their characters' romance in the eighth season, which forced the writers to wrap up the storyline quickly.
16. From the third season onward, Friends filmed at Warner Bros. Studios on Stage 24, which has since been officially renamed "The Friends Stage."
17. Cox is the only regular cast member who did not receive an Emmy Award nomination for her work on the show. Kudrow and Aniston are the only ones who actually won the award.
18. The tenth season almost never happened, with the show's creative team and actors renewing their contracts only days before the ninth season finale aired. The final season was shortened as per Aniston's request that production be wrapped by January 2004 so she could focus on her film career.
19. To diffuse any potential spoilers or plot point leaks from the series finale, the show's creators instigated a rumor that three different endings had been filmed, when in fact only one had.
20. With 52.5 million viewers, the May 6, 2004 series finale is the fourth-most watched television finale in history, following M*A*S*H, Cheers, and Seinfeld. The finale is the second-most watched episode of the series; "The One After the Superbowl" raked in just 0.4 million more viewers on its 1996 broadcast.