I'll be there for you.

I just watched one of the rerun episodes of Friends. It is hard to believe it ended almost 20 years ago. Any episode I stumble on still makes me laugh!

The writers deserve a huge amount of the credit firstly for coming up with such a great idea for a show and secondly for maintaining such a high level for ten years. Without writers there is literally nothing for actors.

All six main cast deserve the highest praise too. Every one of them was simply superb, even in the pilot they were all just ‘on it’ right from the get go. The phrase ‘Lightning in a bottle’ springs to mind. It is so rare to see any cast that good.

What is often forgotten about with Friends which made the cast bond and kept them closer than any other were two things that rarely get mentioned.

The first is attributed to Courteney Cox her crucially setting the tone for the main actors early on. Hard to believe now but at the time Courteney was the only ‘star’ cast. She was a big name due to appearing in THAT Springsteen video, as well as starring opposite Michael J Fox in Family Ties. She had also appeared in Seinfeld. She told the other cast right from the start that she believed the show would work best as an equal ensemble. The show could have almost been ‘Monica’ with the other five around her apartment but Courteney had experienced working on other shows seen that the best ones worked when the cast were tight and by listening to one another. She explained that if any thought there was a better and funnier way then that was always the most important thing. From the beginning, they chose to spend all their time together between filming, they understood that a bond with each other would be important to the show. It set the tone right there and they stayed true to that and helped each other out. Thirty years on they all still appear to be best of friends.

The second credit is for David Schwimmer who followed on in a similar line when it came time for their contract negotiations. By then they had all boomed into mega-stars with the hottest show around. David had the idea and suggested to the others that regardless of who was the bigger name, they all negotiate as one team for the same pay. Some names had gone into the stratosphere for a time, fronting magazine covers, roles in big movies happened, chat show hosts scrambled for them and Hollywood actors wanted others. To those it could have been tempting to hit out for separate contracts while they had a ‘hot’ window but they did not. They stuck together negotiating for the same. It was just as an important part of keeping them all so tight together.

Funny how the two quieter ones may have had the most positive influence on why they have remained such strong friends.