Friends at 30 – the inside story: ‘Matt LeBlanc ate so much beef trifle’

It was on a night out in 1995 in Los Angeles that Friends writer Adam Chase realised the show had become a phenomenon. Out for dinner, while he was writing season two, he overheard a conversation. People weren’t just talking about Friends: they were quoting it. “It became a constant,” he says. “You would go out and you would hear at least one or two people quoting our jokes, arguing about whether they were a ‘Rachel’ or a ‘Monica’.”

That was just the start. Launched 30 years ago this month, the sitcom – which followed six twentysomethings living in New York, largely hanging out in the fictional coffee shop Central Perk – would become a cultural touchpoint for a generation. At its height, it was broadcast in 60 countries, each episode watched by 22 million viewers, all bewitched by sarcastic roommates Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc), uptight siblings Ross (David Schwimmer) and Monica (Courteney Cox), spoiled-but-sweet Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), and kooky Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow).

Catchphrases such as “We were on a break!” were repeated globally. Aniston’s haircut “the Rachel” became one of the most famous in history. Warner Bros started churning out Friends merchandise like they were Star Wars figurines. (It still sells caps embroidered with “Joey doesn’t share food”.) In total, the show ran for 10 seasons over a decade. But the journey from pilot to culture-shifting sensation wasn’t always smooth. As members of the cast and crew recall, the making of Friends was filled with as many twists, turns (and high jinks) as the show itself.

In 1994, the executives at NBC were not convinced that Friends would be a hit. Despite being sold on the concept – pitched by creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane – an internal report described the pilot, first known as Insomnia Cafe and then Six of One, as “ not very entertaining , clever or original”.

In an era in which sitcoms tended to be family, colleague or romance-focused , executives were concerned about making a show with friends at its centre; that the cast was too young, the setting too urban, and that Monica’s decision to sleep with Paul the Wine Guy on their first date – a key storyline in the pilot – would make audiences dislike her. Todd Stevens, a line producer who worked on the show from creation to completion, describes their old-fashioned thinking: “Like, how was that supposed to make a character sympathetic and virtuous?” Producers handed out surveys to the first studio audiences to prove them wrong.

Casting the leads was no small feat. Rachel, in particular, was hard to pin down. Jane Sibbett, who played Ross’s lesbian ex-wife Carol was originally considered for the part. “As soon as I got outside of the audition, the phone was ringing [from my agent]: ‘They love you,’” she says. But she was pregnant; the timings of the shoot didn’t work. Even when the producers had settled on Aniston for Rachel, there were problems. She was already committed to another show, Muddling Through, and would have had to ditch Rachel to work on it if it got picked up. “We had to schedule around her,” says Stevens. “Luckily, Muddling Through did not muddle through successfully.”

Not all the casting took as much effort. The iconic role of Gunther, the Central Perk barista, was filled by James Michael Tyler – the one extra who knew how to operate the coffee machine on set. “He just happened to be there and made it look real,” says Stevens.

By the time Friends hit its stride, the taping days felt like rock concerts. There was airport-style security. Fans would line up for hours, hoping to snag a seat. “They were just so amped, and the laughs were so huge,” says Andrew Reich, a writer who worked on the show from series three onwards. Sometimes, the audience laughed so hard it disrupted the flow of filming. “They were so hyped to be there that they would laugh at a setup line.” The cast often couldn’t keep it together either. In one episode, Joey devours a trifle that Rachel has made with layers of beef and custard, having mixed up two recipes. “They could not get through that scene. I remember Matt LeBlanc eating it with such gusto,” Reich says. “He ate so much of it.”

The camaraderie among the cast was palpable. Schwimmer used to host Mario Kart tournaments in his dressing room, referring to it as “the sport of kings”. Sibbett remembers seeing Aniston, Cox and Kudrow splashing in puddles like children outside the soundstage. “The joy and childlike playfulness was lightning in a bottle,” she says. The writers also had a playful relationship with the cast. “I remember Perry doing that thing where he would emphasise the unlikely word,” says Chase. “And it started out as always being the verb: ‘Could I be any more … ?’ We began messing with him and underlining other random words in a line just to see what he could do with it. He would always make it work.” It’s not the only time the writers asked the cast to intonate phrases in an unusual way. It was Crane who asked Kudrow to put the emphasis on the first syllable of Smelly Cat, for Phoebe’s musical ode, in a way that has been copied by fans ever since. “I’ve seen Chrissie Hynde, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga sing the song, which is mind-blowing.”

Unlike many sitcoms at the time, Kauffman and Crane, who were then in their 30s, sought out first-time writers in their early 20s. Funny moments were often inspired by their real-life experiences. The scene in season three where Joey dons all of Chandler’s clothes and lunges in them – commando – was based on a prank played by writer Brian Boyle on a friend’s roommate. Ross’s ill-fated leather pants were also rooted in reality. “I was talked into buying an inordinately expensive pair, which I proceeded to never wear,” says Chase. More significant storylines, such as Monica and Chandler’s romance, caused drawn-out arguments as they were developed. Initially, their relationship was intended to be a short-lived affair, lasting only a few episodes. However, when the crew filmed the reveal of Monica and Chandler in bed together during Ross’s wedding in London, the audience reaction was so overwhelming they decided to make it a long-term storyline. “It shook us,” Reich remembers. “We all just kind of looked at each other like, ‘Wow, this is much bigger than we thought’.” Not all storylines were as well received. The decision to pair off Joey and Rachel during the show’s later seasons was met with resistance across the board. “The cast was very much against it,” says Chase. “It felt very incestuous to them.”

Behind the scenes, the writers worked hard to keep the show fresh and funny. All-nighters were common. “We were all so young and, honestly, didn’t know any better,” Chase says. The mood during these long nights was often like a sleepover. Once, as a dare, a writer ate a 2.3kg can of beans for $3,000, which the staff pooled together. Another time, a writer avoided a rewrite session by hiking up a bush-covered hill outside the Warner Bros lot with a machete, while the rest of the team watched through binoculars. Chase remembers Julia Roberts coming into the writers room to prepare for her two-episode run on the show in 1996. “My old writing partner, Ira – I still can’t believe he did this – but he walked in behind her, put his arm in hers, and said: ‘Hey everybody, I just want to introduce my new girlfriend, Jules.’ She totally went with it without any hesitation.”

As Friends gained popularity, it attracted many other celebrity guest stars and audience members. Brad Pitt was there most Fridays when he was dating Aniston. Chase also recalls Kevin Costner coming to watch on set and locking him into a conversation during shooting. “I got louder and louder because I was excited to be talking to Kevin Costner,” he says. “To the point where Jen could hear me. She looked at me like, ‘Why are you being so loud?’ I pointed to Kevin and mouthed: ‘It’s Kevin Costner.’ She rolled her eyes, laughed and went on with the scene.” Stevens remembers that Richard Branson provided Virgin plane tickets to fly the cast and crew to London to film Ross’s wedding, when NBC refused to pay for them.

Of course, there were plenty of on-set challenges. Chase tells me about LeBlanc slipping and dislocating his shoulder while shooting the Chair Fight episode . “They were filming ER down the way from us. And those guys would come and visit – George Clooney and Noah Wyle – because they had long waits.” He said that the way Matt told the story was: he crawls backstage, tears are coming out of his eyes because it hurts so bad and he looks up and there’s Dr Ross and Dr Carter, and they immediately go: “Dude, we’re not real doctors.”

“The biggest nightmare out of all the episodes? “The monkey,” he says. Katie the white-faced capuchin – who played Ross’s pet, Marcel, would often climb 30 to 40 feet into the rafters when they were trying to shoot. Chase recalls: “We had to wait as the trainer coaxed it down with mealworms.”

Some scenes became trickier to film as the show turned its cast into global megastars. Stevens says they were hounded by paparazzi in London. He also remembers it was difficult to persuade the cast to go back in the water fountains to reshoot the show’s iconic credits for an alternative reality episode in 2000. “It’s one thing to do that when you’re on the pilot. Revisiting the uncomfortable nature of that, cold and wet, was very different when they were big.” And they were huge . Forbes magazine estimates the actors made $136m each from the show. In fact, Schwimmer reportedly led a campaign for pay rises throughout the series, taking their salaries from $22,500 per episode in season one to $1m for the finale – a negotiation that set the tone for sitcom casts to come .

Watching the show now, Friends isn’t perfect. The way storylines about Chandler’s transgender parent, Monica’s childhood obesity and Carol dumping Ross for a woman are played for laughs often feels uncomfortable. So does the lack of space for Black or Asian characters. Reich, who was involved with casting, says that if he was going to do anything differently it would be “to bring more diversity”.

But the show also had a positive impact, dealing with topics such as infertility and single parenthood before other comedy series. In season two, Carol’s same-sex wedding was one of the first to be shown on a US sitcom – and it happened before it was even legal there. Sibbett remembers the furore around the episode when it aired in 1995. She spent weeks on talk shows discussing gay marriage. “It gave me a great opportunity to have [important] conversations with people,” she says. Looking back, she wishes the sitcom could have shown Carol and her wife Susan kissing on their wedding day.

What does she think about the claim by some fans that the show had homophobic moments, the male leads often treating LGBTQ characters, such as Carol, with fear or disdain? “I don’t think they ever had that intention. I’m sure there were things that in hindsight they wished they had done better or more cleanly. But we can all do better, right?”

While Sibbett and Chase left the show in its later seasons, Reich and Stevens were there until the end. The build up to the finale was “emotional”, says Reich. He remembers the cast and crew hanging out in the studio, crying, hugging and taking pictures. “They started taking the set away that night,” he says. “It was vanishing before our eyes. I remember feeling like, ‘Wow, this place has been home for seven years and it’s going to be a bare stage’.”

“It was a bittersweet moment,” says Stevens of the finale, adding that they knew they “were witnessing something that was a part of history”. And they were. Over its 10-year run, Friends had, in many ways, changed the world. It had spawned a new generation of megastars (was anyone more famous than Jennifer Aniston in the 2000s?). It had altered the way people speak – from introducing phrases such as “ friend zone ” to changing how people structured sentences , as they tried to copy Chandler. A whole generation of teenagers would probably have been far less sarcastic without Friends.

More than that, it altered the kind of sitcoms being made. “I think Friends broke ground by showing that a group of twentysomething characters could carry a show on their own without older parents, bosses etc. That seems obvious now, but it wasn’t then,” says Reich.

Even now, the show is one of the most streamed on Netflix. Thousands of people still attend Friends conventions around the world. Chase says that every year he feels more astounded by the show’s cultural impact. “I remember, 15 years ago, going out to dinner with some of the writers and saying: ‘Can you believe what’s going on with the show? That people are still watching it?’ Now, if anything, it’s bigger.”

• This article was amended on 18 September. The original article referred to George Clooney and Noah Wyle’s characters in ER as “Dr Green and Dr Ross” when in fact it should have said Dr Ross and Dr Carter.