Warner Bros. Threatened To Fire Two Friends Stars to Cut Costs
Friends was not afraid to tread new grounds for a sitcom and do things differently.
The show didn't hesitate to change lines on the fly, following the crowd's reaction to certain moments.
Even Ross' "I take thee Rachel" line, which inspired one of the most iconic moments in the show's history, actually was a mistake from the actor. Both the crew and the fans were passionate about the show, and it achieved massive success.
So people might be surprised to hear that some of the inner workings of the show were so tumultuous, that Warner Bros. nearly fired some of the show's stars at one point.
Specifically, that nearly happened as the result of the renegotiations which occurred after the main cast requested an increase in their salaries to $1 million per episode for each. At the time such numbers for actors on a sitcom, even its stars, were unheard of.
But the success of the show inspired David Schwimmer ( who starred as Ross) to demand better pay, and he talked his castmates into banding together during negotiations, so that all six of them would get equally high amount of money.
As you can imagine, studio bosses were less than enthused about the whole idea.
Although eventually the cast got the number they wanted, there was quite a bit of trouble and turmoil behind the scenes. As Jennifer Aniston ( Rachel) mentioned later in an interview to The Hollywood Reporter, things got so bad that Warner Bros. threatened to fire two of the cast members for the cake of cutting costs.
She stated: "We really did have so much fun together. I remember that was one of the things when we were young and dumb and renegotiating, one of the [studio's] threats was, "Well, we don't need all six of you. We can do this with four of you."
The cast might have been "young and dumb", but they had enough smarts to call the studio's bluff:
"We were like, "What? You can? You can get rid of Rachel or Joey or who?" Then it was like, "No they can't, wake up.""
Luckily for the actors and the fans, Warner Bros. decided not to escalate at this time, and Friends ended up as we know it.