The Star-Studded Friends Superbowl Episode Changed The Show Forever, Here's How
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The Superbowl episode changed everything for Friends. While the sitcom turned into a hit almost proper out of the gate, certain episodes have been hugely important to its longevity. The 1995 two-parter that aired directly after Dallas Cowboys trumped the Pittsburgh Steelers made an already thriving show outlandishly lucrative.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Friends' creators explained how the highly-rated second season show become a total game-changer as well as how they managed to get some of the greatest names in Hollywood to cameo.
Why Friends Was Given A Post-Superbowl Episode
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator David Crane admitted that all he and his colleagues wanted in the early years turned into not to be canceled. But given Friends' speedy good fortune, those worries have been quickly put to mattress.
In fact, Friends was such a good fortune that the then-NBC Entertainment president, Warren Littlefield, made up our minds to air an episode directly after the Superbowl.
This is deemed one among the maximum coveted spots on tv. At the time, it turned into standard for a brand new show to get the time slot. The principle was that the huge Superbowl numbers would lift over and give a child show a massive expansion spurt. However, this did not always work.
So, Littlefield and NBC determined to take a look at something other. Instead, they gave the hour spot to certainly one of their greatest displays.
"Instead of trying a new show, we asked ourselves, 'Why don’t we just give people what they want?' There was nothing hotter than Friends," Warren explained to The Hollywood Reporter.
"We were a success on Thursday night and we go from that to, 'Do you want to follow the Super Bowl?' in a year and a half," David Crane mentioned.
"It was a great honor to be asked," executive producer Kevin Bright stated. "Everybody knows that you get the widest available audience to sample a show.
Co-creator Marta Kauffman revealed that her rationale for doing an hour special after the Superbowl was about more than just ratings.
"I wanted to do it because I had heard a statistic that Super Bowl Sunday is the day associated with the most collection of partner ab*se. My pondering was that if this is helping one girl from being b*aten, I’m excited about it."
Why The Friends Superbowl Episode Was An Hour
NBC had a full hour after the Superbowl that they didn't want to give it up by only airing a 30-minute sitcom. Therefore, they asked that Friends do an hour special. And given that the special aired directly after the biggest TV event of the year, it couldn't be "subtle".
"The Superbowl pressured us to do a type of episode that we wouldn’t in most cases do," David Crane explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "People had been conditioned to looking at just half-hour. That was our first problem."
"We sought after to make sure there became large, promotable, and funny stuff in all the tales," the co-writer of the first part, Mike Sikowitz, explained. "The last item you want is for all those hundreds of thousands of other folks to watch the Super Bowl after which watch your show and pass, 'Well, that changed into pleasant and contemplative.'"
The result was a number of star-studded plotlines that took the characters out of the coffee shop and the apartment.
"This had to be our Friends half-time show," David added. "The incontrovertible fact that we referred to as it 'The One After the Superbowl' as opposed to anything else that had to with the other tales displays you our option to it.
Friends' Celebrity Cameos In The Superbowl Episode
Brooke Shields, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chris Isaak, Dan Castellaneta, Fred Willard, and Julia Roberts have been all invited to be part of the two-part Superbowl special.
"We never, over the course of doing the show, wrote for a specific guest," David said to The Hollywood Reporter. "We came up with stories we thought were funny and put it out to our casting to find the best people. But for this episode, we couldn’t just go with a really good actor. We needed names."
Brooke Shields, who played Joey's stalker, informed The Hollywood Reporter that she mentioned 'yes' once she got the phone name.
"I was sort of obsessed with the show. There was no way I wasn’t going to do it," she defined.
"We were all aware that Brooke had never done this kind of role before. Chris Isaak was an interesting choice because we were all fans of his music," Kevin explained.
For the Rachel/Monica storyline, Jean-Claude Van Damme became selected.
"The part we wrote for him wasn’t necessarily different than how he was in real-life," David Crane admitted.
As for Julia Roberts, it became Matthew Perry who ended up convincing her to guest-star.
"Matthew asked her to be on the show," Kevin explained. "She wrote back to him, 'Write me a paper on quantum physics and I’ll do it.' My understanding is that Matthew went away and wrote a paper and faxed it to her the next day."
At the time, Matthew and Julia have been reportedly flirting with one every other. Shortly after her appearance on Friends, they began courting publicly.
"I remember when I got a call and they said, 'Oh, we got Julia Roberts,' and it was like, 'Are you f—ing kidding me?,'' Warren Littlefield said to The Hollywood Reporter.
As a result of the star-studded two-parter following the greatest TV event of the 12 months, Friends earned an insane 52.9 million audience. Of direction, this also increased their weekly scores by way of a mile and ultimately made Friends considered one of the maximum successful sitcoms of all time.
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