TV SERIES · 1994–2004 · USA
Friends
- Created by
- Marta Kauffman, David Crane
- Network
- NBC
- Seasons
- 10
- Episodes
- 228
- Studio
- Warner Bros. Television, Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions
33 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
Six young people from New York City, on their own and struggling to survive in the real world, find the companionship, comfort and support they get from each other to be the perfect antidote to the pressures of life.
Summary: TMDB
20 Facts From the Making of Friends
- #003
Kauffman and Crane chose to pitch their series about six people in their 20s making their way in Manhattan to NBC, believing it would fit best there.
- #004
Crane and Kauffman brought their idea for Friends to production partner Kevin Bright, who had been an executive producer on their HBO series Dream On.
- #005
The Friends team initially titled the series Insomnia Cafe and pitched it to NBC in December 1993 as a seven-page treatment.
- #006
Crane and Kauffman found the concept behind Friends interesting because they believed "everybody knows that feeling," and because it matched how they felt about their own lives at the time.
- #007
Littlefield struggled to bring the concept to life and considered the scripts NBC developed to be terrible.
- #008
Marta Kauffman and David Crane wrote the pilot script for Friends in three days, under the working title Friends Like Us.
- #009
NBC executive Littlefield wanted Friends to represent Generation X and explore a new kind of tribal bonding, but others involved disagreed.
- #010
David Crane argued that Friends was not a series for a single generation and wanted it to be a show everyone would enjoy.
- #011
NBC liked the pilot script and ordered the series, then changed its title to Six of One because Friends Like Us seemed too close to the ABC sitcom These Friends of Mine.
- #021
Kauffman and Crane hired seven young writers for Friends, with Kauffman and Crane stating that at 40 you cannot do it anymore and that networks and studios seek young people coming in out of college.
- #022
The creators of Friends believed that using six equal characters instead of emphasizing one or two would allow for myriad storylines and give the show legs.
- #023
Most storyline ideas for Friends came from the writers, though the actors also contributed ideas, and the originally planned big love story between Joey and Monica was replaced by a Ross and Rachel romance that emerged while Kauffman and Crane wrote the pilot script.
- #024
During production of the Friends pilot, NBC asked the writers to change the script so that it contained one dominant storyline alongside several minor ones, but the writers refused because they wanted three storylines of equal weight.
- #025
NBC also wanted an older character added to Friends to balance out the younger ones, and Marta Kauffman and David Crane were forced to comply.
- #026
Kauffman and Crane drafted an early Friends episode featuring "Pat the Cop," a character meant to give advice to the other characters.
- #027
Crane considered the "Pat the Cop" storyline terrible, and Kauffman joked that they had "Pat the Cop" in place of the children's book character Pat the Bunny; NBC eventually dropped the idea.
- #028
Before an episode entered production, Marta Kauffman and David Crane revised scripts written by other writers, particularly when material about the series or a character seemed foreign.
- #029
The first and last episodes of each Friends season were the hardest for the creators to write.
- #031
For the ninth season of Friends, the writers were unsure how much storyline to give Rachel's baby Emma Geller-Green, wanting the show neither to revolve around a baby nor to pretend there was none.
- #032
Marta Kauffman and David Crane would not have signed on for an eleventh season of Friends, even if all the cast members had wanted to continue.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Friends — Wikipedia
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