Friends (2024)

FAQs

Why did Friends get Cancelled? ›

Fellow creator David Crane put this down to "the actors' contract negotiations", and said that when they decided that season 10 really would be the last it was because they couldn't "keep stopping and starting and rethinking everything".

Netflix in the United States was the first and major region to lose Friends. It departed in January 2020. Netflix in Canada saw it depart in December 2020. It departed multiple international regions (and was renewed in a few others) in January 2022.

At 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific times on May 6, 2004, that familiar theme song (“I'll Be There For You” by the Rembrandts) announces the beginning of the end, as an estimated 51.1 million people tune in for the final original episode of NBC's long-running comedy series Friends.

Where “Friends” stands out is its ability to make viewers care about those characters. It achieved this partly by weaving them together romantically. The decade-long “will-they-won't-they” intrigue between Ross and Rachel at times turned the comedy into a soap opera.

Internationally, the title of longest-running sitcom goes to Last of the Summer Wine, a BBC comedy than ran for 37 years and 31 series and ended in 2010, according to Guinness World Records. The record for longest-running animated sitcom is held by The Simpsons, which is in its 33rd season.

All 10 seasons of Friends are available on HBO Max.

Netflix is set to lose Friends in more regions in January 2022 as the license for the show comes up for renewal and Warner Brothers Television opting to not renew. Produced between 1994 and 2004, the American sitcom is perhaps one of the most beloved in the genre with over 236 episodes released in total.

Watch Friends - Season 1 | Prime Video.

During the show's ninth season, Phoebe is set up on a blind date with Mike Hannigan (played by actor Paul Rudd) and they eventually marry in the last season.

Who did Joey marry in Friends? ›

Joey Never Got Married After Friends

Joey was never one to get married, even though Joey proposed to Phoebe and Rachel upon hearing they were pregnant, and he was later engaged to Alex. However, Joey's real problem was his fear of commitment.

In the season 5 finale "The One in Vegas", Ross and Rachel marry each other after getting drunk in Las Vegas.

Empirical data on a survey among Friends fans revealed that Rachel is the most attractive in Friends getting a 50% unanimous vote.

1. Phoebe. Of course it's Phoebe! Phoebe didn't nail down Best Friend with quite the emphatic stomping that Ross nailed down Worst Friend; she received 50 percent of the vote for Best Friend.

"The One After the Superbowl" is the most-watched episode in the history of Friends, with a total of 52.9 million viewers tuned in after the Super Bowl ended.

Guinness World Records says the longest film ever made is "The Cure for Insomnia" released in 1987. The 85-hour experimental film was directed by John Henry Timmis IV.

Turn-On is an American sketch comedy series that aired on ABC in February 1969. Only one episode was shown, leaving one episode unaired, and the show is considered one of the most infamous flops in TV history.

(Surprisingly, no Netflix show has run for more than 100 episodes.) The current record-holder for Netflix's longest running series is Grace and Frankie, the sitcom starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin whose lives are thrown upside when their respective husbands announce they are leaving them to marry each other.

The highest-rated American sitcom on many lists, Friends is, by far, deserving of its accolades.

What TV shows spin off all in the family? ›

All in the Family

If you're in the U.S., the answer is no; Friends is not on Netflix. The only place to legally stream Friends in the U.S. is HBO Max.

Due to a licensing renegotiation, Friends left the American version of Netflix on January 1, with HBO planning to use it to draw users to its new streaming service, HBO Max, when it goes live in May.

“Friends” is no longer there for you if you're a Netflix subscriber in the U.S.: The show winked off the streaming service at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 2019.

Watch Friends* Conditions Apply Season 1 Full Episodes on Disney+ Hotstar.

Friends is no longer available on the US Netflix, but it is still available in many other countries. With a VPN, you can change your online location so that you can watch the show from a country where Friends is accessible. For instance, if you live in the US, you can use a VPN to change your Netflix region to the UK.

How to Watch Friends. Right now you can watch Friends on HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and fuboTV. You are able to stream Friends by renting or purchasing on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu.

All 10 seasons are available to watch in HD on HBO Max, including the recent Friends Reunion show.

Who does Ross end up with? ›

The series finale closes several long-running storylines. Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) confesses his love for Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), and they decide to resume their relationship; and Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) adopt twins and move to the suburbs.

Kyle arrives and they all go to the hospital together. All three are shellshocked when they find out that Kyle is the father - Ash especially. A distressed Ash soon tells Phoebe that he's out, leaving her alone and in tears.

Chandler and Monica are parents and moving to the suburbs

Bustle notes that many fans felt bummed to see Chandler and Monica leave New York. (Earlier in season 10, they bought a house in the suburbs to raise the family they hoped to have.)

Phoebe may have had a rough start to life, but by the end of Friends, she was in a great place, married to the love of her life: Mike Hannigan.

However, Phoebe and Joey never got romantically involved, as Phoebe found love in Mike (Paul Rudd), while Joey is, well, just Joey. Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Crane has explained why the pair were never meant to be. "It all would have been too tidy and too complete," Crane admitted.

The two characters spend several years living together as roommates until Monica begins a romantic relationship with long-time neighbor and friend Chandler Bing, whom she marries.

Rachel tells Tino that he's the last man standing in the season finale and he responds by saying he feels “on top of the world,” per ABC. Fade in, fade out, Rachel and Tino profess their love to each other and Tino trades an engagement ring for Rachel's final rose. The two ended the series as a couple.

During the show's second season, the character becomes romantically involved with Monica's brother, Ross, with whom she maintains a complicated on-off relationship throughout the series. Together, Ross and Rachel have a daughter, Emma.

This one-night stand resulted in Rachel becoming pregnant with Ross's baby. This was Ross's's second child and Rachel's first. In the Season 8 finale, Rachel gave birth to her and Ross's daughter, Emma. In "The One With The Videotape", it was revealed that the one-night stand had been caught on tape.

For those who do not have enough time, here is the short version: Joey was the best friend, followed by Ross, while Rachel was the worst friend by far.

Who has the least screentime in Friends? ›

The Friends writers did a remarkable job of distributing screen time evenly among the six principal players. While Joey appears in 47.7 percent of all scenes, the most of any character, Phoebe, the character who appears in the fewest, is just barely behind her pals, with appearances in 41.9 percent of all scenes.

'Friends' co-stars Phoebe and Joey kiss all the time

And then they kiss again for experimental purposes in “The One With Barry and Mindy's Wedding.” Phoebe and Joey kiss three more times throughout the series, making her the most-kissed co-star of them all.

So who earned the most? Well, Giff Gaff dug through all 10 seasons of the hit sitcom to estimate each character's salary – and they've determined that the highest paid member of the gang is, in fact, Joey.

Lisa Kudrow

Her 14 nominations (six for “Friends,” eight for post-“Friends” programs) easily outpace LeBlanc's seven and Aniston's six (though she did win one). This kind of goldmine supports an argument many have always believed: Kudrow is the best actor of the cast.

Chandler had the most screen appearances (1400), Seth found, using the rule that only a scene in which a character speaks a line counts as an appearance. Both Rachel (1370) and Ross (1330) were very close behind, though.

All six Friends stars will reunite for an unscripted special for HBO Max. Both HBO Max and the cast are being pretty hush-hush about the reunion special. Here's every detail we know so far.

Matthew Perry Wishes 'Friends' Hadn't Ended, Regrets Not Doing Season 11. It has been 17 years since Friends aired its final episode on television back in 2004.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix lost Friends in a bidding war with WarnerMedia, which agreed to pay $85 million per year for five years for the show.

Did the Friends set get taken down? ›

When filming wrapped in 2004, the apartment sets were dismantled and, sadly, no longer exist (though they were re-created for Friends: The Reunion). Stage 24, though, still stands and is now known as The Friends Stage in honor of the sitcom's seminal success.

NBC canceled the series due to low ratings on August 23, 2006.

On closer inspection, Friends' ending carries notes of tragedy: sooner or later, your friends will leave you behind. And as if that weren't sad enough, the show also leaves some of its central sextet of Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Joey trapped in increasingly narrow life paths.

The Quality Began To Dip In Season 8

After Chandler and Monica's wedding - which took place in the seventh season finale and was arguably the biggest moment on the show - Friends seemed lack in the storyline department.

During season nine episode 15, “The One With The Mugging”, Jennifer Aniston was replaced with a stand-in while her character Rachel was still in shot, and the understudy (?!) wasn't even wearing the same outfit.

In season seven, Ross and Rachel have sex, and Rachel gets pregnant. Rachel gives birth to a girl in season eight, naming the baby Emma Geller-Green; the name Emma is a gift from Monica, who had previously been reserving the name for her own child.

Joey Never Got Married After Friends

Joey was never one to get married, even though Joey proposed to Phoebe and Rachel upon hearing they were pregnant, and he was later engaged to Alex.

Netflix acquired the streaming rights to Friends in 2015 in a $100 million deal and, according to Nielsen, it is the platform's second-most streamed show.

Janeane Garofalo turned down the part of Monica and instead ended up on Saturday Night Live for the show's infamous 1994-95 season. Although Garofalo's stint on SNL didn't work out, it's completely understandable why she chose the way she did.

Fisher Stevens Admits to Being Rude Guest Star on 'Friends'

Is the fountain in Friends real? ›

Despite many people thinking that the one used in Friends is the Cherry Hill fountain in Central Park, with others claiming the Pulitzer Fountain in Midtown West's Grand Army Plaza was the inspiration behind it, the fountain that was actually used is located in Burbank, California on none other than the Warner Bros ...