'Friends' stars knew they had a hit before the show's 1994 premiere: 'There was electricity in the air'

Could there be a better show turning 30 right now?

On Sept. 22, 1994, Friends debuted on NBC — with the ensemble cast of Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer — and TV was never quite the same.

What happened in the pilot?

From the water-soaked opening sequence — showing the New York City-based 20-somethings dancing around a fountain to the Rembrandts song “I’ll Be There for You” with props (umbrellas! rubber ducks!) — it was clear the show was going to be something special.

The first episode, originally called "The Pilot," introduced us to Monica, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, Ross and Phoebe. The characters and format of the series created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman really didn’t change much over the next decade. It was about friendship, love and life — with one-liners, especially from the late Perry, flying.

Ross pined for Rachel from the jump. Chandler and Joey’s banter made for a beautiful bromance. Mother hen Monica was already uptight. Delightfully spacey Phoebe talked about cleansing auras. And Aniston already had the haircut that would guide a thousand shears.

The episode, later renamed “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate,” referring to runaway bride Rachel, started and ended in familiar territory: Central Perk. That orange couch they sat on became like another character.

Did the cast feel chemistry from the start?

Pretty much. The cast members had all been trying to make it in Hollywood, appearing in different pilots and projects, but “Friends Like Us” — as it was known before the title was trimmed — was different.

“That was lightning in a bottle,” Cox said in an interview with the Off Camera Show. “To have those writers, those creators of the show and the team they put together, and the actors — it just worked. The casting was perfect. It really was.”

Perry, who died from an accidental drug overdose in 2023, detailed making the pilot for the show in his bestselling memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big, Terrible Thing.

“It was so special it felt like we’d all been together in a previous life or something,” he wrote of the chemistry. “Immediately, there was electricity in the air… I could already tell this was going to be big; I knew it from the start.”

Schwimmer initially passed on the role of Ross, but then came to his senses. Perry was the last to be cast, as Chandler. After that, the six actors came together for the first time — although Perry and Aniston already knew each other. He had once asked her out on a date; she declined. (Ouch.)

Earlier this year, Aniston remembered “stepping onto the set” for the first time, “and I don't know, it was just magic. It was the best."

Cheers co-creator James Burrows, who directed the pilot, gets some credit for that. He brought the group to the set of Monica’s apartment to bond, Perry wrote. They sat around and talked about their careers and lives — and made lots of jokes.

“From that first morning, we were inseparable,” Perry wrote. Kudrow told the Television Academy, “We did not leave each other’s sides.” In conversation with Larry King, LeBlanc said his relationship with the cast “was like being in a band.”

During lunch on that first day together, Perry recalled Cox — the biggest name of the bunch at the time — saying to the group, “‘There are no stars here. This is an ensemble show. We’re all supposed to be friends.’”

Kudrow said Cox was inspired by what she saw while taping a guest role on then megahit Seinfeld, where the cast truly interacted like an ensemble. Kudrow said “it was crucial” for Cox to “set that tone.”

The cast hung out in one dressing room. If two people were working on a scene, the other four came to watch. They worked together to punch up jokes in scenes. They walked to their cars together.

When they did the table read, they nailed it. When they taped the pilot, “nobody made a mistake,” Perry wrote. Even LeBlanc, who had the flu at the time.

“Everyone could smell money,” Perry said of the pilot. “The cast could smell fame.”

Cox was so confident she had a hit on her hands, “I bought a Porsche before we even knew we were picked up,” she told Jay Leno. “I was overextended” financially, but “took a gamble, and it worked.” LeBlanc said he auditioned six or eight times for Joey and had just $12 to his name when he was cast.

With the pilot in the can, the sextet had to wait for America to tune in, but their behind-the-scenes bonding continued. After the network upfronts, when it was clear the show would be a hit, Burrows flew them to Las Vegas on the Warner Bros. jet, gave them each $100 and told them to enjoy their final days of anonymity.

“Six new friends got drunk and gambled and wandered through casinos,” Perry wrote. “A million miles from what was coming, which was every single moment of our lives being documented in public for all to see forever.”

Interestingly, Aniston’s casting as Rachel wasn’t locked in until the 11th hour because she was attached to another show, Muddling Through, and they had first dibs on her. (Friends was her sixth pilot.)

“When we were shooting the first grouping of cast photos in front of that fountain, I was asked to step out of a bunch because they didn’t know if I was going to be still playing Rachel,” she said.

She had to ask those behind Muddling Through to let her go for Friends — and they agreed, but she was given grief by a producer. He told her, “‘I've seen that show Friends. … I saw the pilot. That's not going to make you a star,'” Aniston recalled, adding, “And then the rest is history."

Meanwhile, network execs were upset with a storyline in the pilot — in which Monica had a one-nighter with “Paul the wine guy” — deeming it too racy for primetime. The show's top brass had to fight to keep it in.

In September 1994, the Friends premiere was watched by approximately 22 million viewers, making it the 15th-most-watched TV show of the week. That was a big deal for a new show. The next year, Seinfeld was the show’s lead-in and it exploded.

When Friends ended, on May 6, 2004, the cast members were millionaires many times over, having negotiated $1 million each per episode for seasons 9 and 10. They were also still, well, friends.

How does Perry’s death affect this anniversary?

The Friends co-creators appeared on the Today show on Sept. 20 to mark the show’s 30th anniversary. Without Perry, who died from acute effects of ketamine in October 2023, they said the milestone wasn’t the same.

“It’s a huge loss and it does make the 30th a little fraught,” Kauffman said.

Crane added, “He made us laugh every day.”

Friends executive producer Kevin Bright said that he thought Perry had turned a corner in his addiction battle.

“He’d been fighting the good fight for so long, and it did really feel like, from the [2021 Friends] reunion, that he had finally found some peace.”

In August, five people were charged in connection with Perry’s death, including his personal assistant.

How can I watch Friends, and is there anything special happening for the anniversary?

Friends has been available for streaming on HBO Max since 2020 — so you can watch to your heart’s delight.

While an HBO Max spokesperson wouldn’t provide recent metrics to Yahoo Entertainment, in 2023, Friends was streamed for 25 billion minutes. (Perry’s death led to a spike.) In 2022, the show was streamed for 14 billion minutes.

In honor of the show’s anniversary, Max announced that it’s enhancing the viewing experience for its ad-free subscribers. The episodes will stream now with better clarity — in 4K UHD with Dolby Vision and HDR10 on supported devices. There will also be a new design on the Friends collection page, and themed episodes will be packaged together for fans. For example, the most-watched collections are “Chandler Bing, the King of One-Liners” (Best of Chandler), “How YOU Doin’?” (Best of Joey), “We Were on a Break” (Ross and Rachel highlights) and so on.

There’s also new bonus content, including featurettes like “Friends From the Start,” which shows the creative team talking about the development and casting of the show, including some of the challenges they faced.

There is also a Friends 30th anniversary TikTok effect that re-creates the familiar yellow Friends photo frame. So grab some of your own friends, and create some fun group selfies.