The One With
101 Things About Friends
The 101 Things you should know
about Friends:
1.The fist line of dialogue in the very first, pilot episode
of Friends was: "There's nothing to
tell."
2.A 30 second commercial during the break in the show
in America costs advertisers around
£500,000.
3.Other titles considered for the series included "Once
upon a time in the West Village",
"Insomnia Cafe" and "Across the Hall".
The original title "Friends Like Us" was shortened to
the current one-worder
4.The six characters' full names are: Rachel Green (Jennifer
Aniston), Monica Geller (Courtney
Cox), Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), Joey
Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), Chandler Bing
(Matthew Perry) and Ross Geller (David
Schwimmer).
5.According to Aniston, her famous "Rachel" hairdo was
created by accident when her
"friend" Chris cur her hair with a razor.
6.Courtney Cox, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama is
known as CC to her friends and
family.
7.David Schwimmer attended Beverly Hills High, the school
on which the series Beverly Hill
90210 was based.
8.Mattew Perry appeared in Beverly Hills 90210 earlier
in his career. He said of his role: "it's
kind of a blur, but I remember playing
the most popular kid in school who ends up with a
gun in his mouth because his father
is to overbearing."
9.Perry's wit is so legendary that the scriptwriter has
often incorporated his gags into the
show.
10.Cox had the honour of being the first person to say "period"
on American TV, making a
commercial for Tampax.
11.Aniston attended the New York High School for Performing
Arts, the school that "Fame"
was modelled on.
12.Central Perk, the cafe in which they all hang out, is based
on the Manhattan Cafe in New
Yorks West Village.
13.Cox was a cover-girl for People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful
People in the World" issue.
14.She was also dubbed "TV's hottest babe" by American Playboy
magazine.
15.Director James Burrows, responsible for many of the early
episodes of Friends, also
directed Taxi, Cheers and The Mary Tyler
Moore Show.
16.Matt LeBlanc loves dogs and has a mutt called Lady that he
rescued from a dog pound, and
a Doberman called Shadow.
17.Kudrow is married to a French advertising executive, Michel
Stern, and is hoping to have a
baby soon.
18.Schwimmer is the son of two Los Angeles lawyers. His mother,
Arlene, handled Roseanne's
first divorce.
19.LeBlanc, son of a mechanic and a circuit board maker, originally
studied carpentry. "I an not
a dumb guy," he says, "I just play one
on TV."
20.Famous guest stars on the show have included ER's George
Clooney and Noah Wyle,
Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chris Isaak and
Julia Roberts.
21.Perry dated Roberts after her appearance on the show. His
verdict? "She does leave
toothpaste all over the sink and she's
all ways wanting to borrow money."
22.The whole cast huddles together before each episode to wish
each other luck. This made
frequent guest star Tom Selleck feel
a bit left out.
23.Perry's dad was an actor who stared in the Old Spice after-shave
ads; his mother was press
secretary to Canadian Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau.
24.Kudrow has made appearances on several "worst dressed" lists
in American magazines, but
because of her character's clothes rather
than her own.
25.Perry is very fond of female vocalists. He says: "If you're
a woman and in any kind of
emotional duress and you sing a song
about it, I will buy your album." Favourites include
Shawn Colvin, the Indigo Girls and Tori
Amos.
26.When the pilot show was approved by the network, and a series
commissioned, the entire
cast was sent on a free trip to Las
Vegas.
27.Cox dated Batman actor Michael Keaton for five and a half
years, and they are still
reportedly "good friends".
28.After graduating in speech and theatre from Chicago's Northwestern
University, Schwimmer
founded a theatre company, Lokkingglass,
with 17 class mates.
29.Aniston's dad was an actor, John Aniston, who starred in
top US soap opera Days of Our
Lives. He divorced her mother when Aniston
was nine.
30.Kudrow gets fed up with being considered in real life to
be as dippy as her on-screen
character, Phoebe: "People talk slower
to me, as if I were a ten-year-old," she reveals.
31.Kudrow graduated from exclusive American college Vassar,
where she gained a major in
biology.
32.Cox has been known to bleach her teeth.
33.Like Ross, LeBlanc has simian friends... he starred with
an animatronic chimp in the baseball
movie Ed.
34.Aniston, real name Anisonopolous, used to be 30lb heavier,
until her agent told her to loose
weight. She gave up mayonnaise, pre-meal
snacking and butter to reach her current trim
size.
35.Cox, who weighs 7st 3lb (101lb) and wears a British size
six is terrified of being fat. She
says: "My ideal weight would be 100lb.
My whole family is shaped like pears and I'm afraid
of looking like that."
36.Aniston recently played a very unglamorous role in Ed Burns
film She's the One. She was
cast as a wife whose husband refuses
to sleep with her.
37.Courtney Cox's step-cousin is Stewart Copeland, of pop group
the Police fame.
38.Schwimmer is very keen to become a father. "I've always wanted
a family," he says. "I think
that's why we're here - to have children,
raise them well and try to improve the quality of life
for all people who will follow."
39.His most recent girlfriend, Natalie Imbruglia - who played
Beth in Neighbours - was seen
canoodling with record producer Nigel
Godrich.
40.The cast apparently get on as well in real life as they do
on screen. They play poker and
Scrabble together, and the girls often
shop with each other. The rumour that they had made
a pact never to sleep together is untrue.
41.LeBlanc and Aniston were rumoured to have had a fling.
42.The day he auditioned for Friends, LeBlanc had a big scab
on his nose and forehead after
falling down drunk on a bender the night
before.
43.When Schwimmer first met LeBlanc he was sceptical. LeBlanc
was wearing leather jeans,
and Schwimmer thought he was "Joe Cool
Stud" and hated him on sight.
44.Cox originally read to play the part of Rachel.
45.Perry has been linked to actress Tricia Fisher, daughter
of Connie Stevens and Eddie Fisher,
who played Hollywood madman Heidi Fleiss
in a TV film.
46.LeBlanc is a speed freak who competed in amateur motor-racing
competitions at the age of
eight. In a recent celebrity Grand Prix
he ran into a wall, taking Jason Priestley's car out of
the race.
47.As a teenager, Cox was Bruce Springsteen's dancing partner
in Brian De Palma's video of
Dancing in the Dark.
48.Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz was linked to both
Cox and Aniston.
49.Like his on-screen character Joey, Le Blanc has a reputation
as a womaniser. He has been
linked to volleyball star Gabbrielle
Reece, English actress Minnie Driver, porn star Jenna
Jameson, Goldie Hawns's 16 year-old
daughter Kate Hudson and several stripers.
50.Schwimmer complains of being hounded by women who demand
that he kiss them - even
when their boyfriends are there, too.
51.In The Pallbearer, Schwimmer’s first film since joining Friends,
he stared with Gwyneth
Paltrow. The film did badly in the USA.
52.When she was younger Aniston wanted to be a sculptor. At
the age of 11, she had a
painting in an exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York.
53.After being picked to play Roz Doyle in Frasier, Kudrow was
dropped in favour of actress
Peri Gilpin before the pilot was ever
shot.
54.Friends is Channel 4's top-rating comedy, regularly attracting
three million viewers.
55.Kudrow's father is one of the world's leading experts in
headaches.
56.LeBlanc was down to his last $11 when he got the part in
Friends.
57.Schwimmer claims to have been "a fat ugly geek" in high school.
58.Cox played the part of Michael J Fox's girlfriend, Lauren,
in Family Ties, between 1986 and
1988.
59.She claims to have been really in love only once. The lucky
man was called Paul, hailed from
Leeds, and "he made a hell of a Yorkshire
pudding".
60.Now engaged to marry Sandra Bullock's ex-fiancé
Tate Donovan, Aniston counts among
her former loves ER's Noah Wyle, actor
Johnathan Silverman, co-star Matthew Perry, and
Grant Heslov from True Lies.
61.David Schwimmer accused the handlers of his on-screen pal
Marcel the monkey of being
"too possessive". He claims he was never
allowed to bond with the creature.
62.Marcel's trainer, Nerissa Pulitzer, said of her charge: "If
Monkey were human, she'd be
Meryl Streep."
63.The monkey was the first cast member to get a Hollywood movie
role, appearing in the film
Outbreak.
64.The daughter of Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon, Jennifer Grant,
played an employee of
Chandler's who ended up dating him in
the first series.
65.The Friends album includes songs from REM, Joni Mitchell
and Hootie and the Blowfish, a
band four of them once went to see.
66.The theme tune, I'll be there for you by the Rembrandts,
has been a huge hit on both side of
the Atlantic.
67.Friends executive producers Marta Kauffman and David Crane
also created the adult sitcom
Dream On.
68.The characters of Ross's ex-wife Carol and her girlfriend
Susan are based on the
godmothers to Kauffman's daughter.
69.The opening footage of the cast dancing around a fountain
was filmed on the Warner Bros.
lot in LA at five o'clock in the morning.
70.The first thing Cox bought with her Friends money was a brand-new
Porsche.
71.The occupations of the characters are as follows: Ross, palaeontologist;
Monica, chef; Joey,
actor/model; Phoebe, aromatherapist;
Rachel, Waitress;Chandler, data processor.
72.Cox was the best-known of the case before the show. She played
opposite Jim Carrey in
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and was in
Cocoon: the Return.
73.LeBlanc is currently filming Lost in Space with Gary Oldman
at Shepperton Studios. He's
renting a flat in Londons Kennsington
and has been seen shopping in Budgens.
74.Two models for American underwear company Victoria's Secret
appeared in the first series.
One of them was the dream girl Chandler
gets stuck with during a blackout, the other was a
girl who is convinced that Joey has
VD.
75.Perry looked at 40 houses before buying his current W-shaped
ranch house with pool, in
Los Angeles.
76.Aniston bought her brother a Bronco car for Christmas, and
he cried.
77.Schwimmer was in the first series of NYPD Blue. He was a
nerd who lived in the apartment
next door to Sherry Stringfield and
ended up shooting a mugger.
78.Kudrow co-stars with Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino in a new film,
Romy and Michele's High
School reunion.
79.Christina Pickles, who plays Monica's mum, also worked with
Cox ten years ago on the film
Masters of the Universe.
80.Cox said of her character; "She's obsessive, the one who
has to be perfect and please
everybody. I'm so similar to her it's
frightening."
81.When Jay Leno asked Aniston to touch her nose with her tongue
on the Tonight show, she
politely declined.
82.Kudrow started her showbiz career at Groundlings, a local
improvisation comedy school in
Los Angeles.
83.Schwimmer has a multi-million dollar deal with top Hollywood
studio Miramax to star in and
direct several films.
84.Aniston starred in an unsuccessful horror movie called Leprechaun
in 1993.
85.Her next feature is a romantic, Picture Perfect.
86.Kudrow used to date American talk-show host Conan O'Brien.
87.LeBlanc admits to having spat in someone's food when he worked
in a New York burger
joint.
88.Aniston's shampoo commercial for L'Oreal is only being shown
in Europe. She says that she
will never do a hair product ad in America.
89.Her godfather was former Kojak actor Telly Savalas.
90.Perry has recently lost two and a half stone, while allegedly
depressed and on painkillers.
Despite celebrity girlfriends such as
Julia Roberts, he attributes his state of mind to his failure
with women.
91.Raised in Ottawa, Canada, Perry was a junior tennis ace before
talking up acting. He never
graduated from college. He gave
up his studies when he won a role in a sitcom called Boys
will be Boys. His first movie
role since joining Friends was Fools rush in, playing a nightclub
promoter.
92.Childhood friends of southern belle Cox were reportedly shocked
at the lesbian storyline in
the show.
93.Perry's grandfather, however, loves the show. And so do all
his friends.
94.In a somewhat unlikely claim, Perry also insists that Mrs
Thatcher is an avid viewer,
particularly of Joey and Chandler's
scenes.
95.Neurotic about her looks, Cox worries about the thin, dry
skin under her eyes, having
different-sized nostrils and a double
chin. As if...
96.There's a book out called Cooking with Friends, full of comfort
food recipes for when "it
hasn't been your day, your month, or
your year" - a reference to the theme song.
97.Matt LeBlanc used to model Levi 501's and has appeared in
TV ads for Coca-cola and
Heinz Ketchup.
98.LeBlanc admits to being a mummy's boy, and is devoted to
his Italian mother, Pat
Grossman. He didn't meet his father
until he was eight.
99.Cox plays a TV reporter chasing down a serial killer in horror
flic Scream.
100.The show's producers admit that the characters could never
afford the rents on the
apartments they live in on the show.
101.Highlights of the third series include guest by Robin Williams
and Billy Crystal, and a scene in
which Joey strips naked.
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