Tabla de contenidos para PEOPLE Friends: Laughs, Tears & the Inside Story en People

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS Monica, who illegally took over the lease of her grandma Althea’s too-good-to-be true rent-regulated apartment in Greenwich Village. (“If the landlord ever asks, I’m an 87-year-old woman who’s afraid of her VCR.”) Without that there would have been no cozy nest for Friends’ controlling mother-hen figure to gather her rambunctious brood of pals. Obsessively neat, aggressively organized, Monica soon learned to (sort of) cope with the chaos of perfectly planned Thanksgivings that invariably went off the rails, of windows that looked out on Ugly Naked Guy, and of the influx of roommates and couch-surfing neighbors who didn’t share her passion for orderliness. “I need to live in a land where people can spill,” said Phoebe, by way of explaining her exit across town. “You…

The Rembrandts weren’t strangers to the charts before they recorded the theme song to Friends. In 1991 the L.A.-based duet of Danny Wilde and Phil Solem (far right, on The Tonight Show in 1995) hit 14 on the Billboard pop chart with “Just the Way It Is, Baby,” off their debut album. But nothing beat having a song that played at the start of what would soon be the most popular show on TV. (For those of you joining the Friends fandom in the streaming era, this was before “Skip Intro.”) “I’ll Be There for You,” which topped the Hot 100 for eight weeks, was written by the band, along with Friends producers David Crane and Marta Kauffman, her then husband, composer Michael Skloff and songwriter Allee Willis. Since…

FRONT COVER Jon Ragel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images TITLE/TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images; 2-3 Terence Patrick/HBO Max WHEN THEY ALL GOT TOGETHER 4 Alamy; 5 Danny Feld/NBCU Photo Bank; 6-7 Terence Patrick/HBO Max REMEMBERING MATTHEW PERRY 8-9 Mark Lidell/Contour by Getty Images; 10 (from left) Seth Poppel Yearbook Library; Brent Perniac/AdMedia/MediaPunch/Alamy; 11 (clockwise from top left) Seth Poppel Yearbook Library; ABC/Getty Images; Alamy; 12-13 SIPA; 14-15 Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images SHARING HOPE 16-17 Photographed in Hollywood on Sept. 20, 2022, for People magazine by Brian Bowen Smith; 18 (clockwise from top left) ITV/Shutterstock; Photofest; Cliff Lipson/CBS/Getty Images; Everett; 19 Art Streiber/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images; 20-21 (from left) L.Cohen/WireImage/Getty Images; Gregg DeGuire/WireImage/Getty Images; Nigel Parry/Trunk Archive; Tom Williams/Getty Images; 22-23 Brian Bowen Smith THE BEST OF TIMES…

EVERY DAY,” SAID Jennifer Aniston, without hesitation. On the Burbank soundstage where Rachel and Monica’s apartment had been lovingly re-created for a 2021 reunion on HBO, the actress was answering a question put to the Friends cast about how often they feel grateful that the show brought them into one another’s lives. Every day. Her costars agreed. Yes, the series launched enviable careers for Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Matthew Perry. It also gave them a bond, Aniston added, like “family.” That bond held strong, too, among fans of the show, a ratings powerhouse that began its run in 1994. Viewers would log so many hours in the virtual company of Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Ross and Chandler that by the eighth season, a…

‘LOOK, THERE’S A PIECE THAT DOESN’T HAVE FLOOR ON IT!’—RACHEL THE CHEESECAKE ALLIANCE When a neighbor’s cheesecake is mistakenly delivered to Chandler’s apartment in 2001, he and Rachel can’t bring themselves to return it because it’s “too delicious.” Obsessed, they find (and steal) the replacement cheesecake; their battle over the dessert lands it on the floor, where they continue to eat it. ‘LOOK AT ME, I’M CHANDLER. COULD I BE WEARING ANY MORE CLOTHES?’—JOEY JOEY GOES COMMANDO During a 1996 spat that erupts when they should be getting dressed for Ross’s big museum benefit, Chandler hides Joey’s underwear. “You hide my clothes? I’m going to do the exact opposite to you,” says Joey, who retaliates by donning most of his roommate’s wardrobe and “going commando” (i.e., no boxers) in…

ROSS & MONICA’S FAMILY THE GREENS PHOEBE’S TREE A TON OF TRIBBIANIS CHANDLER’S FOLKS…

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“WE ARE ALL SO UTTERLY DEVASTATED BY THE LOSS OF MATTHEW. WE WERE MORE THAN JUST CAST-MATES. WE ARE A FAMILY”—JENNIFER ANISTON, COURTENEY COX, LISA KUDROW, MATT LEBLANC & DAVID SCHWIMMER “It was my privilege to play his father-in-law. My heart goes out to his wonderful family.… He will never be forgotten”—ELLIOTT GOULD “I remember being thrilled to have met a natural talent, comedian and brilliant actor.… Rest in peace, dear Matthew … you have given so much joy and laughter to so many”—SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK “We will always cherish the joy, the light, the blinding intelligence he brought to every moment—not just to his work but in life as well. He was always the funniest person in the room. More than that, he was the sweetest, with…

Before Friends was a phenomenon, its six stars were excited just to be on a series that had been picked up. In 1995 (back when we used phrases like “hunka hunka” and “muy macho”—sorry, Matt LeBlanc), People had exclusive access to the season 1 set. This look at the early days of a hit and of enduring friendships first appeared in April that year. BACKSTAGE AT Warner Bros. Studios the cast of NBC’s hit sitcom Friends is hard at work. Sort of. Well, okay, they’re goofing off. In the hallway, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston are on the floor wrestling before heading out for a frozen yogurt. Lisa Kudrow is cutting a cookie with a knife and fork. Matthew Perry is explaining how, unfortunately, his own romantic life provides…

“SHE’S SPOILED, BUT SHE KNOWS no other life,” is how Jennifer Aniston explained Rachel Karen Green during the first season of Friends. In the pilot, Rachel, a pampered daughter of a cranky cardiologist, leaves orthodontist Barry at the altar and arrives at Central Perk in her wedding dress in search of the only person she knows in the city: high school pal Monica Geller. Unwilling to sign on to life in the suburbs with a man she doesn’t love, Rachel moves in with Monica and, despite being broke and jobless, cuts up her father’s credit cards. “Welcome to the real world! It sucks. You’re gonna love it!” Monica assures her. “Wish me luck. I’m going to go get one of those ‘job’ things!” Rachel declares, but soon discovers she…

FOR CHANDLER BING, sarcasm isn’t just a form of humor—it’s a self-protective way of life. On his third nipple: “It opens the entrance to the magical land of Narnia.” On women: “Until I was 25, I thought the only response to ‘I love you’ was, ‘Oh, crap.’” And when Monica, in their last moments of being just friends, notes how efficiently he jumps under the covers and peels off his clothes, he responds: “It bodes well for me that speed impresses you.” Chandler’s humor masks a painful past as the only child of Charles and Nora Bing, who, when Chandler was 9 years old, ruined Thanksgiving by announcing they were divorcing. He was then sent to an all-boys’ school (where he learned to smoke). In college he met Ross,…

MONICA’S APARTMENT At one time or another, all six friends lived here. (Ross’s stint was in college, when he was trying to make it as a dancer and living with the grandmother who left the flat to Monica.) But despite the rotating residents, little changed about the place. “The apartment is comfortable for viewers,” set decorator Greg Grande told Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “Remember when Mary Tyler Moore changed apartments? It was completely uncomfortable.… We didn’t want that to happen here.” And yet Joey asks in the finale, when the living room is bare, “Has it always been purple?” CENTRAL PERK The look of the gang’s home away from home was modeled on a now-defunct West Village vegetarian restaurant called Arnold’s Turtle, which production designer John Shaffner used to…