Can she BE any more clear? Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman says that the beloved NBC comedy won’t be making a comeback.
“Nope! Never happening,” Kauffman, 60, exclusively told Us Weekly at the Netflix FYC special screening for Grace and Frankie on Saturday, May 13. “I know, [rumors] happen all the time! Not happening. Not ever.”
Last year, Kauffman told Us that it was “shocking” how popular the series still is today. “For me, why go back to that territory again? I get to do [on Grace] what I loved about Friends, which is, make a show that’s got some hope and joy to it and explore something completely new,” she said at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, California, in January 2016. “That was about a certain time in your life, and I had just left [the] Friends time.”
Rumors that the Central Perk gang may reunite haven’t slowed down. Following a recent internet hoax, Jennifer Aniston said that the show could never exist in today’s digital age.
“We were jokingly saying that if Friends was created today, you would have a coffee shop full of people that were just staring into iPhones,” the 48-year-old said during Arianna Huffington’s new Thrive Global Podcast on iHeartRadio earlier this month. “There would be no actual episodes or conversations.”
Friends ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004. The cast, who famously negotiated $1 million each per episode in the early 2000s, also included Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer.
In July 2015, Kauffman commented on those big raises. “A million dollars an episode is kinda ridiculous,” she told The Wrap at the time. “Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of money.”
