1. Today, Monica’s apartment would cost at least $4,500 a month. (In the show, it was explained that she was able to afford it because she inherited the rent-controlled apartment from her grandmother.)
2. The cast was scared by the idea of Joey and Rachel together because they didn’t “belong together, and it wasn’t right.”
3. The director encouraged the cast to play poker as a way to bond. This later inspired “The One With All The Poker.”
4. In the beginning, the cast would all get together and watch the show.
5. Initially, Jennifer Aniston was considered for Monica, but she wanted to play Rachel. Courtney Cox was considered for Rachel, but she wanted to play Monica.
6. Ursula Buffay was introduced to explain that Phoebe Buffay is the twin sister of Lisa Kudrow’s character on Mad About You.
7. When they were shooting the pilot, the network got nervous that the audience wouldn’t like Monica because she had sex on the first date, so they made up a survey to give to the audience. Most of the audience couldn’t have cared less, and they left it in the show.
8. According to Marta Kauffman, one of the show’s creators, the question went like this: “For sleeping with a guy on a date, do you think Monica is: A) A Slut, B) A Whore, C) Too Easy, D) None Of The Above.” She said that “it was all none of the above. Nobody cared except for this one guy.”
9. While filming “The One Where No One’s Ready,” Matt LeBlanc dislocated his shoulder, which is why Joey had a sling for a few episodes during Season 3.
10. Because Matthew Perry was so similar to Chandler, the actor ended up helping a bunch of his friends prepare their auditions. He couldn’t audition himself because he was already committed to another project, but when it was cancelled, he auditioned for Chandler, and the rest is history.
11. According to Jennifer Aniston, none of the cast members were fans of the theme song.
12. It took hours to shoot the title sequence, and everyone had “pruney fingers” by the end of it.
13. For all 10 years of filming, Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, and Lisa Kudrow had lunch together every day, and they ate the same food every day.
14. For the final season, each member of the cast was paid $1,000,000 per episode, the highest salary ever paid to a television ensemble at the time.
15. Lisa Kudrow thought that a reunion hoax was real and was upset that she wasn’t asked to participate.
16. Matt LeBlanc’s daughter has started saying: “How are you doing?” When LeBlanc tried to tell her it’s “how you doin’?” she told him that no, in fact, it should be “how are you doing?”
17. Jennifer Aniston turned down a job on Saturday Night Live to be on Friends.
18. Hank Azaria auditioned for the role of Joey twice before being cast as Phoebe’s boyfriend David.
19. Ellen DeGeneres was offered the role of Phoebe and decided not to take it.
20. Phoebe drank the most coffee of any character with 227 cups throughout the 10 seasons.
21. The characters’ birthdays changed multiple times. Ross once said his birthday was in December, and on a different occasion, he said it was on Oct. 18.
22. When Friends premiered, People gave it a D+ rating and Time called the characters a group of “dysfunctional morons.”
23. When Bruce Willis was a guest star, he donated the money he made from the three episodes to charity.
24. Ugly Naked Guy was an uncredited role. Many people believed he was played by Michael Hagerty, who played Mr. Treeger, but he was actually played by a man named Jon Haugen.
25. When asked why he had never come forward before his identity was discovered in 2016, Haugen explained: “I was just keeping it mellow because Warner Brothers was keeping it mellow. They wanted everybody to have a guess who I was.”
26. Neither Haugen nor David Schwimmer were actually naked when they filmed their scene together. They were both wearing boxer shorts, and the scene was just shot so that it looked as if they were naked.
27. There was a storyline where Chandler went to a male strip club because he really liked the sandwiches, and Matthew Perry convinced the writers to scrap it.
28. The pilot tested so poorly that Friends almost never made it on air.
29. There are a handful of episodes where you can tell that there are doubles standing in for the cast members.
30. Lisa Kudrow’s pregnancy was written into the show through her surrogacy, but Courtney Cox’s pregnancy during the last season was simply ignored because she and Chandler were unable to have kids.
31. NBC told the creators of Friends that they needed to have an older character because no one would watch a show about a bunch of twentysomethings.
32. Chandler tells Monica that he loves her for the first time two different times.
33. The production team needed to save money, so “The One Where No One’s Ready” was filmed in the basic sets without any guest stars.
34. The writers began to really like the episodes where it was just the six of them in a room and did at least one per season.
35. Lisa Kudrow didn’t like learning the guitar and suggested that Phoebe play the bongos.
36. Courtney Cox wanted Matt LeBlanc to be cast as Joey because he was “so dang cute.”
37. The cast kept crying while filming the finale, so they had to keep redoing their makeup.
38. David Schwimmer, who was the “rock,” starting getting choked up during the cast’s final pre-show huddle. Once he got choked up, that was it. Everyone lost it.