![]() The show is doing just fine, people love it. All we’d be doing is putting those six actors back together, but the heart of the show would be gone. One, the show is about a time in your life when your friends are your family. You’ve been adamant that there will be no Friends reunion. We just finished a screenplay based on one of my favorite books of the last 15 years, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. Yes, we’re in development with a couple of things. The most we can ask for right now, I think, is “behave better.” I don’t think the sense that it’s a boys’ club at heart has really changed yet. I think there’s greater awareness and more willingness for women to speak out. It was a scary time, but a good ending.ĭo you feel there’s less overt sexism in Hollywood now? I sent him a huge basket with tampons, hairspray, pantyhose, nail polish…anything I could think of, to say “This is to help you get in touch with your feminine side.” And he sent me a Harley-Davidson leather jacket to help me get in touch with my masculine side. They ended up sending out a little survey to our dress rehearsal audiences and one of the questions was like, “For sleeping with a guy on the first date, do you think Monica is a) a whore, b) a slut, c) easy?”Īround that time, a journalist asked me what it was like working for someone who had come from the sports world, and I said I couldn’t answer on the record but that it was hard working for somebody who has misogynistic leanings. When we were shooting the Friends pilot, the head of the network at the time said that Monica got what she deserved for sleeping with someone on the first date - broke up with her. What’s an example of a misogynistic note you got? When you have a misogynist running a network and they give you notes, are going to come from that perspective. You can’t help but experience it in this business. But I’ve had quite a few experiences with misogyny. If I was in a room and the men we were pitching to were only looking at David and Kevin, I would try to stay active in the conversation and not let myself feel dismissed or minimized. How did you handle sexism earlier in your career? I had not, and to this day, six years in, every once in a while we’ll be sitting at a table read and I’ll look across the table and think, “Holy shit, that’s Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin over there.” Had you met them prior to working on this show? We did not, because we had Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. When it came to Grace and Frankie, did you have any trouble pitching a show centered on two older women? There are benefits to the streaming era too - especially for creators, who are making shows networks never would have greenlit in the past. Now, people lie in bed and watch on their computers. And part of the affection I have for those shows is that we would all crowd into a room and watch as a community. ![]() ![]() Back when I was in college, it was Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda. Do you feel something has been lost in how we watch TV today?Ī little bit. David Schwimmer had auditioned the year before for another pilot and he was in our heads when we wrote Ross - his voice, the hangdog thing.įor a generation of fans, Friends epitomized appointment television, where you’d get together to watch. She’s the one who said, “No, I should be Monica.” Matthew Perry was one of the first names on our list but he was doing another show at the time so we made an offer to another actor, who thankfully turned it down, and we got back to Matthew. We thought Courteney Cox might be Rachel. Honestly, we had just come off Dream On, a show with one lead in every scene, and we wanted to do an ensemble.ĭid you originally consider any of the lead actors for different roles? ![]() I think it’s very difficult and a mistake to base what you’re going to develop on what exists and what doesn’t. What gap did the show fill in the market when you first came up with it? These are trying times, and certain people want the comfort food rather than the difficult, mean-spirited kind of show. What do you think is driving the Friends resurgence, especially with younger viewers? RELATED: 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time “They thought it was a period piece.” Here she weighs in on the phenomenon, discusses her newer projects and looks back at her 30-year career. “They’d say to her, ‘Have you seen that new show, Friends?'” she says. Its finale aired in 2004, but Friends is still alive and well on Netflix, where it’s caught on in a big way with young millennials - a phenomenon co-creator Marta Kauffman says she’s “thoroughly enjoying.” When the show first arrived to the streaming service four years ago, Kauffman says her teenaged daughter’s friends were hooked, if a little confused.
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