To all the “Friends” fans still holding out hope for a reunion, this definitely isn’t your day, your week, your month or even your year.
While the beloved sitcom’s stars have wavered on whether they’d be willing to reunite for an updated version since the series ended in 2004, co-creator Marta Kauffman has been adamant that everyone ― unlike the show’s central couple ― is on a permanent break.
And while crazier things have certainly happened in the age of peak revival TV, Kauffman’s rationale for nixing a new chapter for Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe actually makes perfect sense.
“There are several reasons. One, the show is about a time in your life when your friends are your family. It’s not that time anymore,” Kauffman told Rolling Stone in an interview published on Tuesday. “All we’d be doing is putting those six actors back together, but the heart of the show would be gone.”
Kauffman also believes reviving the show isn’t in the creative team’s best interest because whatever they come up with “could only disappoint.”
“The show is doing just fine (in reruns), people love it,” she said, likely referencing the show’s resurgence in popularity since it hit streaming services. “A reunion] could only disappoint ― ‘The One Where Everyone’s Disappointed.”’
The cast sans Matthew Perry actually reunited off screen in 2016 to celebrate the work of legendary director James Burrows. They joined Andy Cohen on stage where the actors spilled behind-the-scenes secrets.
Jennifer Aniston was the last to offer an update on a reunion, saying that co-stars Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox were more open to the idea than the rest of the cast.
“Listen, the girls always say we would love to do it again, and the boys are a little less excited about it for some reason — I don’t know,” the actress said in 2018.
She added: “And so, we’ve decided that we’ll just do … a remake of ‘The Golden Girls’ in 40 years.”
Her assessment seems pretty spot-on, given that Matt LeBlanc said last year that at the end of the day, he believed the show was about a “finite period in those characters lives.”
“To see what those characters are doing now, I think it’s almost a case of that the book is better than the movie,” he told The Independent. “Everyone’s imagination of what they’re doing now is better.”
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