The powers that be behind hit ’90s/’00s sitcom Friends recently discussed the highs and lows of the series during a panel celebrating the show’s milestone anniversary.
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But while the panel discussion brought some happy revelations (such as co-creator Marta Kauffman’s belief that Ross and Rachel would still be together in 2019), there was also some not-so-great intel revealed about the show.
The first of these being their conviction that a Friends reunion or reboot simply wouldn’t work.
“We will not be doing a reunion show. We will not be doing a reboot,” Kauffman said.
“There are two reasons for that. One of the reasons we won’t do a reunion is because this is a show about a time in your life when your friends are your family. And when you have a family, that changes. But the other reason is it’s not going to beat what we did.”
Co-creator David Crane weighed in, adding, “We did the show we wanted to do. We got it right, and we put a bow on it. If you visited those characters now, it just would not be the same DNA and chances are, it wouldn’t be as good.”
The creators went on to recount a sexist incident where the head of NBC painted the character Monica as a “slut” / “whore.”
In the pilot episode, Monica (Courteney Cox) sleeps with Paul The Wine Guy on the first date. In order to get her to bed, Paul tells her that since his wife left him, he hasn’t been able to perform sexually, so Monica believed him and has sex with him.
Shortly after, she finds out that her co-worker was told the same thing and also slept with him, so Monica dumps his sorry ass.
According to the show’s creators, the network hated this concept, not because the man lied to Monica for sex, but because an NBC executive was concerned that viewers would frown upon Monica’s willingness have sex on the first date.
The network tried to bin the story altogether, but the producers came up with a compromise to get the story across the line.
“The person who was the head of NBC at the time felt that Monica got what she deserved for sleeping with a guy on the first date,” Kauffman said.
“That’s how it got in,” Crane said, recalling their disagreement with the executive. “Finally, he gets on board with this rationale. He told us that right after the network run-through. I saw Marta, her eyes glazed over.”
“Fire was coming out of my nose,” Kauffman added.
Just to prove their point, executive producer Kevin Bright revealed the network sent out a survey to viewers to see if the public agreed that Monica was too promiscuous.
“They handed out an actual survey to see if people felt that she was a slut…and nobody cared,” Bright recalled. “They liked her. There was no judgement that came from the survey.”
They didn’t name and shame the dreadful NBC exec but could he BE any more sexist?
