Where to watch Friends (1994–2004)

Trivia & production notes

• The creators wrote Ross Geller specifically for David Schwimmer and cast him first, before auditioning other actors for the remaining roles.
• Courteney Cox campaigned to play Monica instead of Rachel, wanting the stronger character, and co-creator Marta Kauffman agreed after watching her audition.
• Matt LeBlanc played Joey as more simple-minded than the character was originally written, giving him unexpected heart, and network executives ordered the creators to cast him despite their initial reluctance.
• The casting directors narrowed down 1,000 applicants for each role to just 75, then further to three or four finalists who read for the president of Warner Bros. Television.
• The writers originally planned the main love story to be between Joey and Monica, but the idea of a romantic connection between Ross and Rachel emerged while writing the pilot script.
• NBC wanted the pilot to include a character called Pat the Cop to provide wisdom to the younger characters, but the creators rejected the concept after finding it terrible.
• The show's episode title format of "The One..." was created because episode titles would not appear in the opening credits and would remain unknown to most viewers.
• Each 22-minute episode took six hours to film, twice as long as typical sitcom tapings, due to numerous retakes and script rewrites.
• The opening title sequence was filmed at 4:00 am in a fountain at the Warner Bros. Ranch during unusually cold weather for Burbank.
• The fourth-season finale was shot on location in London with three separate audiences of 500 people each, making them the largest studio audiences the show ever had.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Friends, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.