Friends could have had a very different main couple had the creators kept their initial plan of having Joey and Monica get together – and it would have been super weird. Created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, Friends debuted on NBC in 1994 and came to an end in 2004 after 10 seasons. The series followed a group of six young adults (Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Ross) living in New York City and navigating through adulthood as best as they could.
Over the course of ten seasons, viewers got to know the characters quite well as they watched them grow on many levels. The chemistry between the main cast was undeniable, which helped the writers adapt the stories of their characters for the better – as result, Rachel and Ross became the series’ main couple and Monica and Chandler ended up together. However, the creators had a different plan for Monica, and had it happened, it would have been very weird (and probably wouldn’t have lasted long).
Monica and Joey were originally intended to be a couple – in fact, they were going to be the main couple in Friends. This was ultimately changed, and it was one of the best decisions they could have made.
Why Monica and Joey Wouldn’t Have Worked
The group viewers met in the first episodes isn’t the same they saw in the final seasons of the series. Each character had its own story and evolution, and the plans the creators originally had for them ended up not working once the cast was complete and the series was out. In the pilot episode of Friends, Joey was the womanizer stereotype, even hitting on Rachel after she ran away from her wedding, and wasn’t the goofy type that everyone now knows (and loves). Monica dated a lot of guys, in a sort of “woman version of Joey” way, to the point where the audience had to stop NBC from slut-shaming her. The creators of the show found them to be too similar, and thus intended to pair them up – but that would have ruined more than just the dynamics between those two.
The on-screen chemistry between Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox wasn’t romantic, which is why they worked better as friends, and watching their characters get together would have been very weird, simply because they weren’t compatible – as happened later on with Joey and Rachel. Joey hitting on his friends was alienating him from the group, and dating Monica wasn’t going to fix it. LeBlanc caught this and suggested that Joey instead treated Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe as if they were his little sisters, and that way he would feel like one of the friends. Having Monica and Joey together would have also required major changes to Joey (no more ladies’ man, for instance) and would have also affected the arcs of the rest of the group, especially Chandler.
The idea was briefly explored in season 3’s episode “The One With The Flashback”, which takes place a year before the events of the pilot episode. In it, Joey becomes Chandler’s roommate, and Monica is immediately attracted to him. She invites him over for some lemonade but Joey misinterprets this and strips naked – and that was as close to the original plan as they got. As the audience didn’t react as expected to this and the rest of the pairings (Rachel and Chandler, Phoebe and Ross), none of them were explored further. Friends wouldn’t have been the same had Monica and Joey become a couple, and the relationship (and possibly the series) wouldn’t have last long.