'Friends' Creators on NO-Friends Reunion, Surprises, Regrets & HBO Max

I can still feel all the fans of the iconic TV show, F.R.I.E.N.D.S sulking, angry and every possible emotion as the creators of the show, Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Kevin Bright officially confirmed that there will be no reunion of the show nor any reboot.

However, in an attempt to move on from that, let's talk about other things. The celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the show have already begun where the creators were present at the Tribeca TV Festival and spoke about several things. 

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the Tribeca TV Festival event, Bright, Crane, and Kauffman said before Friends debuted on Sept. 22, 1994, they were just hoping their comedy about six twenty-somethings living in New York wouldn't get canceled.

"We had just done a show that was canceled after six [episodes] and we were like, 'Let us get to seven and we'll be happy. That's our victory,'" Crane recalled. "And then when they picked us up for the back nine we thought, 'Wow, this is really going.'"

Kauffman added, "When you set out to do something, you set out to do a good show and you hope people watch and then you keep your head down and you keep working and you don't really think about success. You wonder if people are watching it but you don't start imagining this and pop-ups and celebrating 25 years, which is so very long ago. No, it never, never occurred to me that we would be standing here."

After airing for 10 seasons on NBC, Friends is now in syndication, with reruns airing several times a day on multiple channels, on DVD and Blu-ray and (for a few more months at least) streaming on Netflix.

Recently Netflix subscribers were crushed to learn that the series they'd happily binge-watched since 2015 would be leaving for WarnerMedia's new streaming service, HBO Max.

Speaking to THR about the move, Bright, Crane, and Kauffman, who still has ties to Netflix through Grace and Frankie, said it makes sense for the Warner Bros.-produced show to be with its parent company while praising Netflix for bringing the show to a new audience.

"It makes so much sense that we're on HBO Max," Kauffman said. "I understand it. I get it. The show is still all around the world in syndication. So I think other people are more upset than we are."

Regretted Storylines and Jokes

When asked by the audience if there were storylines that they regret, Kauffman had a couple of examples ready: the one when Phoebe starts dating her sister Ursula's (Lisa Kudrow) stalker, played by David Arquette ("we did a lot of rewriting on that to make it work"), and Phoebe and her then-love interest, played by Charlie Sheen, going through an outbreak of the chicken pox during their romantic weekend together.

Meanwhile, Crane, who admitted he doesn't remember a lot of specific scenes and jokes after working on 10 seasons 15-25 years ago, said that when he does stumble upon an episode, he'll occasionally wonder, "Wow, really? We went with that?"

"There are some that are better than others," he said.

Kauffman added, "It's much harder for me to enjoy the good moments when there are moments in it where I'm going, 'Oh my God, we let that happen? We did that.'"

"We couldn't stay 10 more minutes and just find a better joke?," Crane said he finds himself wondering. "But that's just us beating ourselves up."

Nevertheless, I'll Be There For You.