Jennifer Aniston almost left Friends halfway through the first season for CBS sitcom
Revelation comes on sitcom's 25th anniversary
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Jennifer Aniston almost had to leave Friends during its first season, a pop culture historian has revealed.
Saul Austerlitz, the author of the book Generation Friends, says in an excerpt published by Entertainment Weekly that Aniston had shot several episodes of a CBS sitcom titled Muddling Through early in Friends history.
According to EW, if Muddling Through was picked up, Aniston would have had to quit Friends, an NBC show, halfway through the first season.
Per Austerlitz, then-NBC boss Warren Littlefield and Preston Beckman, the network’s head of scheduling, decided to compete with Muddling Through by putting out a series of unreleased Danielle Steel film adaptations at the same time slot as the sitcom.
The rest is history: Muddling Through aired for just 10 episodes on CBS, between July and September 1994.
Aniston went on to play the iconic Rachel Green for all of Friends‘s 10 seasons.
Friends premiered in September 1994 and kept airing until May 2004.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments