Friends stars Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow are plotting their sitcom return, two decades after their hit NBC show ended.
Aniston, 57, and Kudrow, 62, laughed uncontrollably and wiped away tears as they reflected on their Emmy-winning tenure on Friends and schemed their return to multicam TV on Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors interview on Wednesday.
“Boy, that was really fun. That all still feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?” Aniston, who played Rachel Green, asked.
“No, it doesn’t to me. So I have watched it now,” Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay, replied, adding that she loved rewatching the show “with all her heart,” and would often find herself glued to the TV until “two in the morning.”
Kudrow revealed in 2024 that she only began rewatching the show after the death of their co-star, Matthew Perry.
“It made me so happy to watch it,” she continued. “And, man, you’re all good. Holy cow! You were really good, Jennifer. It’s such a ridiculous thing to say to people! Like, of course."
“That was such lightning in a bottle, the chemistry of all of us. And the writers played off of us and our relationships, which were truly genuine,” Aniston said.
The Morning Show star asked her co-star whether she missed shooting multi-cam rather than their current single-camera TV show, The Comeback.
“When I’m sitting on a set waiting, and it’s been a long time? Yes, I do,” Kudrow quipped.
The actresses then devised their sitcom comeback.
“I would love to do another one, if anyone wrote a good one,” Kudrow exclaimed. “Let’s do it. You heard it here!”
“Can we do you, me, and Courteney? What would that be?” she asked, referring to Friends star Courteney Cox, who played Monica Gellar.
“Girlfriends,” Aniston declared. “Let’s pitch it. Let’s workshop it in front of all of these wonderful people.”
Kudrow, who earlier this year wrapped her final episode of The Comeback in the same Warner Bros. studio lot where Friends filmed, held back tears as she described returning to the iconic soundstage.
“We were looking at stages, and Warner Bros. offered Stage 24,” Kudrow said, noting she was uncertain whether it was intentional.
“And I can’t tell you how many ways that moved me. Oops,” she continued, choking up. “Because knowing this is the end of Valerie Cherish and The Comeback, and that was where it was the end of Friends..."
“S--t!” Aniston, who also cried during her and Kudrow’s 2020 Actors on Actors interview, said while reaching for her own tissues. “Goddamn! I did this last time. Shoot.”
After ending her career-defining role on Friends, Kudrow immediately began The Comeback, which was initially canceled before returning for a second season nine years later, and a third 12 years after that.
Reflecting on the link between the two shows, Kudrow noted that she has a photo of her then two-year-old son, Julian Stern, washing a cup in Rachel and Monica’s Friends kitchen. Two decades later, Stern, 28, would appear on the same soundstage in The Comeback.
“That young man was baked on that show,” Aniston quipped.
“Literally. Every huddle. Touched my stomach before we’d go out,” Kudrow recalled.
