Keep ahead of your fellow Friends fans by committing these little known facts to memory: 1. Original names for the show included “Once Upon a Time in the West Village”, “Across the Hall”, and “Friends Like Us” before deciding on “Friends”. 2. Original storylines focused around only six of the friends – Monica, Ross, Rachel, [...]

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The Greenwich Village building used as the friends’ apartment block in establishing shots

The first season was shot on Stage 5 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California.[41] The NBC executives had worried that the coffee house setting was too hip and asked for the series to be set in a diner, but eventually consented to the coffee house concept.[26] The opening title sequence was filmed in a fountain at the Warner Bros. Ranch at 4:00 am, while it was particularly cold for a Burbank morning.[42] At the beginning of the second season, production moved to the larger Stage 24, which was renamed “The Friends Stage” after the series finale.[43] Filming for the series began in the summer of 1994 in front of a live audience, who were given a summary of the series to familiarize themselves with the six main characters;[26] a hired comedian entertained the studio audience between takes.[15] Each 22-minute episode took six hours to film—twice the length of most sitcom tapings—mainly due to the several retakes and rewrites of the script.[15]

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Early reviews of the series were mixed. Tom Feran of The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the series traded “vaguely and less successfully on the hanging-out style of Seinfeld”, while Ann Hodges of the Houston Chronicle called it “the new Seinfeld wannabe, but it will never be as funny as Seinfeld.” In the Los Angeles [...]

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Cultural Impact of “Friends” During the the series’ run, pop psychologists have “prattled” about the cultural impact of Friends, with the producers laughing, “It’s only a TV show.” Aniston’s hairstyle was nicknamed “The Rachel”, and copied around the world. Joey’s catchphrase, “How you doin’?”, has become a popular part of Western English slang, often used [...]

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