‘Friends’ Creators Recall Defending Monica’s Storyline in Pilot After NBC Executive’s Opposition

The co-creators of Friends revealed that they had to fight for Monica Geller’s storyline in the first episode, which featured her sleeping with someone on a first date.

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Nearly 30 years after the beloved show premiered, David Crane and Marta Kauffman recently told The Times UK that an NBC executive wanted to change Monica’s (Courteney Cox) plot in the pilot, which aired in September 1994.

“The guy who was in charge said: ‘We’re not going to like Monica because [in the pilot] she sleeps with a guy on the first date,’ We made the argument that it makes her sympathetic,” Crane recalled, adding that the network even looped in the audience, hoping they would back their opinion.

“The network, in trying to prove that the audience wouldn’t like Monica if she sleeps with a guy on the first date, distributed a little questionnaire to the audience at our dress rehearsal,” Crane said. “And it was so skewed. The question was like: ‘When Monica sleeps with a guy on her first date, is she a) a slut or b) a harlot?'”

However, the audience had their own thoughts and it wasn’t one of the options listed on the questionnaire. “People wrote in saying: ‘No, it’s fine,'” Crane recounted.

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In “The Pilot,” also titled “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate,” Monica sleeps with a co-worker nicknamed “Paul the wine guy” on their first date after he claims he hasn’t had sex with anyone in two years, since his last relationship ended. But Monica learns later in the episode that he lied to get her to sleep with him.

Throughout the Emmy-winning show’s 10-season run, the live studio audience played a huge role in its success, including helping with some of its storylines, namely Monica and Chandler Bing’s (Matthew Perry) relationship.

“We thought it would be a one-night stand,” Kauffman told The Times UK of the episode where their characters hook up in London before Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) and Emily Waltham’s (Helen Baxendale) wedding. “But they received such a strong reaction from the audience in London that it actually altered where we were going with the storyline.”

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