The One With a
Melting PotThe show only had eight weeks to
find its cast—and preferably
one as diverse as its New York
City setting.
The producers expressed a desire
to be open about race and ethnicity
as well. They knew that the Ross
and Monica characters were to be
siblings, and had decided that they
would be played by white perform-
ers, but were open to anyone for
the other four roles. [Ellie] Kanner’s
initial lists included numerous African-
American and Asian-American per-
formers. The flexibility was a step
forward, to be sure, but some of
Friends’ later struggles regarding
diversity were etched in stone here.
Without an explicit desire to cast
actors who looked more like New
York, the producers were likely going
to end up, as if by default, with an
all-white cast. As later critics would
note, comedy was a less integrated
genre than drama. Dramatic series
had room for a greater variety of
characters, and their settings—
hospitals, precinct houses, court-
rooms—allowed for characters from
different walks of life to interact.
Comedy expected its audiences to
embrace its characters and was far
more tentative about asking them
to identify with characters who were
not white and middle-class. Telev i-
sion executives were more fearful
of asking audiences to laugh along
with characters of color, concerned
that such shows would be ignored
by the majority-white audience.The One With a
Different MonicaReality Bites star Janeane Garofalo
was offered the role of a much
harder-edged Monica.
Monica was to be “tough, defended,
cynical, sarcastic.” In an ultra-
nineties reference, they described
her as having “the attitude of Sandra
Bernhard or Rosie O’Donnell and the
looks of Duff,” referring to the MTV
VJ and model Karen Duffy. Monica, in
this original conception, was to be
a blue-collar New Yorker with aspira-
tions of starting her own restaurant.
She would work at a Le Cirque–
like establishment: “We just think it
would be fun to see this tough, down-
town woman in this uptown, French
bulls--- arena.” Monica would also
have a “real maternal side,” lookingtime to wish our Friends a happy
birthday. On Sept. 22, NBC’s
era-defining sitcom will celebrate
the 25th anniversary of its pre-
miere. The story of six lovably
neurotic friends—played by Jen-
nifer Aniston, now 50; Courteney
Cox, 55; Lisa Kudrow, 56; Matt
LeBlanc, 52; Matthew Perry, 50;
and David Schwimmer, 52—
navigating the caffeine-fueled
excitement and terrors of
New York City, developed into
a cultural phenomenon over the
course of its 10-season run,
winning Emmys and amassing
52.5 million viewers (live!) for its
series finale in 2004.
And Friends—or Friends Like Us,
as it was once going to be called—
has lived on in enduring Saturday
Night Live impersonations, Cen-
tral Perk coffee-shop pop-ups,
old DVD sets, cable reruns, and
endless Netflix binges. (Get those
in while you can. In the U.S., the
show will depart the streaming
service for HBO Max in 2020.)
It feels like the series is still at the
height of its popularity, a success
that owes everything to its mag-
ical combination of six practically
unknown actors.
And yet! As author Saul Auster-
litz reveals in his new book,
Generation Friends, the show’s
casting was hardly so simple. In
fact, the sitcom was dangerously
close to going in several differ ent
directions. Here, EW presents
exclusive excerpts from the book,
detailing the fascinating behind-
the-scenes machinations that
went into creating the definitive
TV gang. —David CanfieldIt’s