Jennifer Aniston says the studio once threatened to fire two of the main Friends cast members. The sitcom ran for ten seasons from 1994-2004 and quickly became a hit with both critics and audiences, now ranking as one of the most popular TV shows ever made. A special titled Friends: The Reunion, which brought the original leads back to the show's set, dropped on HBO Max on May 27 of this year.
Friends follows a group of six people as they live through their 20s and 30s in New York City, and they all rank among the most recognizable characters in television history. Aniston plays Rachel, who comes to live with her childhood best friend Monica (Courtney Cox) after leaving her husband-to-be at the altar. She maintains a will-they-won't-they relationship with Monica's brother, Ross (David Schwimmer), throughout the show's run. The group also includes Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler (Matthew Perry), who live in the apartment across the hall, and Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe.
It might be difficult for fans to imagine the series without that core group of actors, but in an interview with THR, Aniston recalls Warner Bros. execs threatening to ax two of them. She says the studio made the remark while the cast were renegotiating their salaries, warning the young actors that Friends needed just four of them to succeed. However, she remembers, they saw through that pretty quickly. Check out her full quote below:
We really did have so much fun together. I remember that was one of the things when we were young and dumb and renegotiating, one of the [studio’s] threats was, “Well, we don’t need all six of you. We can do this with four of you.” We were like, “What? You can? You can get rid of Rachel or Joey or who?” Then it was like, “No they can’t, wake up.”
The Friends actors would ultimately be successful in squeezing the studio for better deals multiple times throughout the ten seasons. The six entered negotiations collectively before season 3, agreeing to all take the same salary, and by seasons 9 and 10 they were earning $1 million per episode, making Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow the highest-paid TV actresses ever. They even managed to receive syndication royalties starting in 2000, a benefit that had only previously been given to stars who owned their shows, such as Jerry Seinfeld.
When first hearing that Warner Bros. once threatened to fire two of the Friends cast, many fans are likely to react by laughing. The sitcom was built as a true ensemble series that not only allowed all six stars to shine individually, but also required their combined chemistry to work - had any of the principal actors decided to leave at any point during its run, the show would not likely be looked on as favorably as it is today. Thankfully, though, Aniston and Co. called the studio's bluff, and viewers got to see the characters' stories played out to the end.
Source: THR