The Friends storyline that TV bosses tried to get banned - but test audiences helped make it to air

It's been 30 years since the first episode of Friends premiered, but fans still can't get enough of juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits from the show.

The creators of the hit sitcom have been slowly breadcrumbing fun anecdotes about Friends for decades. Now, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the brains behind the show, recently told The Times they once had to fight to get a storyline to air.

Kauffman and Crane revealed NBC executives weren't too thrilled about a story arc featuring Courteney Cox's character Monica Geller from the show's very first episode.

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In the pilot episode, Monica sleeps with her co-worker Paul the Wine Guy after their first date, only to have him never call her again. However NBC bosses were worried viewers wouldn't respect the now-beloved character after this.

"The guy who was in charge [an NBC executive] said: 'We're not going to like Monica because [in the pilot] she sleeps with a guy on the first date.' We made the argument that it makes her sympathetic," Crane told The Times.

"In trying to prove that the audience wouldn't like Monica if she sleeps with a guy on the first date, [the network] distributed a little questionnaire to the audience at our dress rehearsal."

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Crane said the questionnaire was "so skewed" and simply asked audiences "is she a) a s—t or b) a harlet".

The dress rehearsal audience chose "none of the above", Crane revealed, even though that wasn't an option. And it seems the audience's measured reception to the storyline helped make it to air.

It wasn't the only narrative from Monica's character that was shaped by fans of the show.

Later on in the series, when Monica and Chandler slept together in London, the reaction to their relationship was so positive that writers decided to make it permanent.

"We thought it would be a one-night stand. But they received such a strong reaction from the audience in London that it actually altered where we were going with the storyline," Kauffman explained.

Conversely, there was another storyline that plenty of fans (and even some of the cast) wished never made it to air.

It was the romance between Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel and Matt LeBlanc's Joey.

"In the beginning, Matt LeBlanc did not want to do that story," Friends executive Producer Kevin Bright told Digital Spy in 2018.

"He was very firmly against it, saying that he's Ross' friend, and that the type of friend that Joey is would never go and take someone else's girlfriend."

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