Friends was an Emmy award-winning American situation comedy about a group of six friends living in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and produced by Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane. It was originally broadcast from 1994 to 2004. One of the most popular television series of all time, the show has been broadcast in over one hundred countries and still continues to attract good ratings for its repeat episodes. The final episode of the show remains one of the largest in terms of television audience numbers in the U.S.
Friends was created in 1994 by David Crane, who wrote Friends in Burbank, California, and who got his start working with the legendary Norman Lear and Marta Kauffman, who served as writer and producer of Dream On, Friends was aimed at young adults who, during the early 1990s, were identified by their café culture, dating scene and modern independence.
Two of the series' stars, Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston, had already appeared in several unsuccessful sitcom pilots.
Another, Lisa Kudrow, was also familiar with working on sitcoms having played Ursula Buffay on Mad About You. In the series, it was revealed that Ursula was the twin sister of Kudrow's Friends character, Phoebe. Kudrow was fired during filming of the pilot of Frasier after being cast as Roz.
Courteney Cox was already an accomplished TV and film actress when she was cast, having appeared in the likes of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and had had several minor roles on sitcoms such as Seinfeld and Family Ties.
David Schwimmer was wanted by the writers of Friends for the part of Ross Geller from the beginning; having auditioned for Crane and Kauffman in the past, Schwimmer was said to have a memorable voice and was most known for his Broadway work, but he did also direct some of the Friends episodes.
Matt LeBlanc appeared as Vinnie Verducci, the boyfriend of Kelly Bundy in Married... with Children in the early 1990s and starred in that sitcom's short-lived spin-off, Top of the Heap as well as Vinnie & Bobby, but before that had mainly been focusing on advertising and modeling work when he was cast as Joey Tribbiani.
The show is a comedy mainly about people in their thirties just trying to live everyday lives.
Behind the scenes, the show was known for its unusually cohesive and unified cast. The six main actors made deliberate efforts, from early on, to keep the show's ensemble format and to not allow any one of them to dominate. This included requesting that all actors on the show be nominated either for the same category of award ("Supporting Actor" until 2001, then "Lead Actor" from 2002 onwards) or not at all, and entering collective instead of individual salary negotiations.[1] The actors became such close friends that one guest star, Tom Selleck, reported sometimes feeling left out. This was a criticism later echoed by British actress Helen Baxendale, who guest starred as Ross's second wife, Emily.
The character of Ursula (Phoebe's twin sister) first appeared in the sitcom Mad About You as a waitress. Kudrow played Ursula on both Mad About You and Friends. The show's creators did not originally intend for Phoebe to have a twin, but they added the character to explain why Kudrow was appearing on two different shows on the same network, at one time as a part of the same Thursday night line-up.
Friends featured many of its celebrity guest stars as secondary characters in the show. Most U.S. sitcoms use celebrities in cameo appearances to raise ratings during important sweeps weeks, but some celebrities appeared on Friends throughout each TV season. These stars included Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, George Clooney, Sean Penn, Danny DeVito, Robin Williams, Helen Hunt, Brooke Shields, Julia Roberts, Sarah Ferguson, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin, Ralph Lauren, Hank Azaria, Anna Faris, Winona Ryder, and Isabella Rossellini. British business mogul Richard Branson made a guest appearance in a Season Four episode. Creator Of R'n'B Girl Group "Pussycat Dolls", Robin Antin made an appearance. One guest star who gained a recurring role was Tom Selleck as Monica’s older long-term boyfriend. The parents of the six were cast using celebrities: for example, Kathleen Turner played Chandler's drag-queen father, Elliott Gould played Ross and Monica's father, and Teri Garr played Phoebe's flaky birth mother.
Four CSI stars also played in Friends: Aisha Tyler from CSI: Las Vegas, Eddie Cahill from CSI: NY and Emily Procter & Sofia Milos from CSI: Miami. Child star Dakota Fanning played the role of Mackenzie in Season 10 of the series in the episode 'The One With Princess Consuela'.