Friends Quiz
The six actors were told to enjoy their last weekend as unknowns before the first episode aired.
A Friends quiz with answers that mixes questions for viewers with stories from behind the cameras: the theme song, the set, the titles that were rejected and the way the show was filmed.
Did you know?
- The gold frame around the peephole on Monica's purple door was an accident. It originally held a mirror, which a member of the crew broke. The empty frame was hung on the door as a temporary fix and looked so good that it stayed for ten years.
- James Michael Tyler, who played the coffee-shop manager Gunther, was first hired as a background extra. He was given the part largely because he had worked in a real cafe and was the only extra who knew how to operate the espresso machine on the set.
- The sofa in Central Perk is always free for the six friends, which would be unlikely in a busy New York cafe. Look closely at the coffee table in many episodes and you will see the explanation: a small sign that reads 'Reserved'.
How Friends became a worldwide hit
Friends was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who based it loosely on their own years as young adults in New York. The idea was simple: six people in their twenties, at the stage of life when friends act as a family. The American network NBC placed it on Thursday nights in September 1994, and within a year it was one of the most watched programmes in the country.
Filming in front of an audience
Each episode was performed like a short play before about three hundred people. A recording could last five hours, because the writers stood beside the set and rewrote any joke that failed to get a laugh, after which the actors performed the scene again. Episodes that revealed major plot turns were filmed without an audience to keep them secret. The fountain in the opening titles is not in New York either; it stands on a studio ranch in California.
Six equal stars
The show had no single lead. Storylines were shared so that each of the six characters carried a similar weight, and the actors chose to negotiate their contracts together rather than separately. Asking for the same pay for everyone was unusual in television at the time and has been copied by other casts since. Fashion followed the series too: one character's layered haircut was requested in salons around the world.
A long afterlife
The final episode in 2004 was one of the most watched broadcasts of its decade, but the series never really went away. Repeats ran daily on channels in dozens of countries, and when streaming services arrived it found a new audience too young to have seen it the first time. Teachers of English often use it in class, because the dialogue is clear, everyday and full of humour.