The history of the series

THE HISTORY OF THE SERIES FRIENDS

The series Friend was created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, originally presented from September 22^nd, 1994 to May 6^th, 2004. The series have 236 episodes of 22 minutes each one, divided in 10 seasons. The theme song is the music "I'll be there for you" by the group Rembrandts. Friends started entitled Six of one, then changed the name to Insomnia Cafe and Across the Hall until receive the original name, Friends.

        The series is about a group of six young friends that live in Manhattan, New York and want to share the experiences of their lives together.

Kauffman and Crane after developing Friends with the title of Insomnia Café in November 1993, they presented the idea to Bright, who had worked with them previously, and together presented the project to the NBC. After several re-recordings and modifications, the series finally was nominated as Friends and it premiered in the most coveted block “Must See TV” from NBC.

 

David Crane and Marta Kauffman the creators of Friends.

 "I'll be there for you" is Friends' theme song. If you want to listen to this music, click here

The idea of creating the series

HOW THE ACTORS HAD THE IDEA OF CREATING THE SERIES

David Crane and Marta Kauffman started developing three new pilots to television that would premiere in the second semester of 1994, after having their sitcom Family Album canceled by CBS in 1993. Crane and Kauffman decided to present the series about “six people with theirs 20 years finding their way in Manhattan” to NBC, because they thought it would be suitable to this channel. They presented the idea to their production partner Kevin Bright, who worked as executive producer in the series of the HBO Dream On. The idea to the series came up when Crane and Kauffman started remembering of the moment they had finished college and started living by their own, in New York. Kauffman believed that they were looking for the moment that the future was “a large question mark”. They thought this was an interesting concept, because they believed that “everybody knows how this feeling is”, and because, they felt that about their own lives at that moment. The team of producers entitled the series as Insomnia Café and launched the idea in a project of seven pages to the NBC, in December 1993.         

At the same time, Warren Littlefield, who was the actual president of the NBC Entertainment, was looking for a comedy involving young people that lived together and shared their expenses. Littlefield wanted the group to share the memorable periods of their lives with their friends, becoming new member of a substitute family. However, Littlefield found difficulties in bringing the concept to reality and found terrible scripts developed by NBC. When Bright, Crane and Kauffman presented Insomnia Cafe, Littlefield got impressed how they knew who were theirs characters. The NBC bought the idea of developing a pilot, so, Crane and Kauffman started writing a pilot script for a sitcom, which, at the moment, was entitled Friends Like Us and took three days to be written. Littlefield wanted the series to represent the Generation X, but the creators did not agree with his vision. Crane argued that it was not a series to a specific generation, but he wanted to produce a series that everybody would like to watch.   

As a result, the NBC liked the script of the episode, but, ordered the change of the title to Six of One, because the other title was similar to a sitcom from NBC, called “These Friends of Mine.

Where the series took place in the plot and where it was filmed

    WHERE THE SERIES TOOK PLACE IN THE           PLOT AND WHERE IT WAS FILMED

The first season was filmed in the Studio 5 of Warner Bros. Studios, in Burbank, California. The NBC’s executives were concerned that the decoration of the café Central Perk, was very hip and they requested that the series should be defined during a dinner, and finally they agreed with the concept of coffee house.

        At the beginning of the second season, the production moved to the Studio 24, which was renamed to “The Friends Stage” after the end of the series. Each episode of 22 minutes of duration, took six hours to be filmed.

        Despite the fact of producers always wanted to show the stories how the actors were in the local, Friends never was filmed in New York. Bright used to think that the filming of the episodes done out of the studio were less funny. The fourth season was filmed in locations in London, because the producers were aware of the popularity of the series in the United Kingdom. The scenes were filmed in a studio with three parterres, each one composed by 500 people. These were the larger audience during it execution. The end of the fifth season, that took place in Las Vegas, was filmed in Warner Bros’ studios, in spite of Bright have met people that thought that the episodes had been filmed in Vegas.

                               This is the place where the plot took place, in New York.                                                     
                                                   

 

  This is Warner Bros Studios, in Burbank, California, where the series was filmed.

How the actors were chosen

   HOW THE MAIN ACTORS WERE CHOSEN

The auditions for the main roles took place at New York and Los Angeles. The initial idea was to be only four friends on the series: Monica, Rachel, Ross and Joey. Phoebe and Chandler were just secondary characters. But, when the series started they became fixed characters.

     All actors auditioned for the characters, but David Schwimmer. The writers developed the role of Ross for David Schwimmer; thus, he was the first actor chosen. The producers wanted Courteney Cox to portray Rachel; however, she refused and asked to portray  Monica. The actress Janeane Garofalo almost portrayed Monica. Kathy Griffin and Jane Lynch auditioned to interpret Phoebe. Chandler almost was interpreted by Jon Favreau and Jon Cryer. Rachel would be interpreted by Tea Leoni. The writers did not want Matt LeBlanc to interpret Joey.

At last, the actors Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow were chosen based on their tests.