Unscripted & Unplanned Moments From FRIENDS
There are many reasons for which we love the evergreen TV Show “F.R.I.E.N.D.S”. Such as the hilarious moments which make us laugh our head off, all the drama, romance, and of course the amazing cast who maintained the essence of the show for 10 long years.
But, did you know that some of the most ‘laugh-out-loud’ jokes were not in the script? That’s right, there were many instances where the actors came up with the jokes themselves. Some were made using wit and some were the result of mistakes but the directors didn’t cut them off because they looked so natural!
I have listed down some of the moments that were unscripted either by choice or situation.
The one where Chandler made a mistake in his joke.
In the episode “The one with Phoebe’s Uterus”, Joey was wearing a Blue blazer of a museum tour guide. This definitely called for a sarcastic joke from the funniest guy “Chandler”. The original line was “I know Donald Trump wants his Blue Blazer back” but Matthew made a mistake and said “blue blazer black”.
The one with Matthew’s own joke.
There was one episode where Chandler asks his friends to recommend him a tailor. Joey tells him to visit the tailor he has been going since 15 no wait, 16? No, maybe he was 15… Oh no, that was 16. Well, it was somewhere around 1990.
In this scene, Matthew was not supposed to react but just scoff and let go. But gentlemen, that’s Matthew we are talking about, and he can’t let go of moments where he can add comic elements. So instead of just following the script, Matthew slipped in a line, “Ok, you have to stop the Q-tip when there’s RESISTANCE! And of course that fake gun he had ready to shoot! All credit for this scene goes to Matthew only.
The one with Paolo’s Italian lines.
Remember Rachel’s Italian boyfriend Paolo? Well, turns out his dialogues weren’t scripted because none of the directors knew Italian. At that moment, they had two options where one was to try and come up with actual Italian lines. And the second one was to let the actor, Cosimo Fusco come up with his own dialogues. The directors took a chance and tried the second way out. So the actor ended up devising his own dialogues.
The one with Marcel being what he is.
Two of the most difficult characters to shoot are babies and animals. It is genuinely hard to control them or rather we should say you can’t control them. And that’s the reason, such scenes take a lot of re-takes.
The one where Joey hurt his arm.
In one of the episodes, it was shown that Joey hurt his arm while jumping on his bed. We were made to believe that he was hurt after falling from the bed. But the original script didn’t have this. Actually, the script was altered after Matt broke his arm in real. Remember the episode in which Matt and Matthew were fighting over a chair? Well, during their tussle, Matt got some real pain!
The one where Christina Applegate couldn’t pronounce Phoebe.
Christina Applegate was one of the best guest appearances on Friends. She played the role of Rachel’s sister, Amy. Remember how she kept calling Phoebe as Emma and thought that the name “Phoebe” was a weird sound?
Well, the idea of not calling Phoebe by name was not in the script. While rehearsing, Applegate struggled in saying the name, Phoebe and that’s how it began. They finally decided to make things hilarious by continuing the same in the final plot!
The one with the final line of the show
We all know the two main hang out places of the group. One undoubtedly was Monica’s house. Another was, of course, the “Coffee House”, Central Perk. In the last episode when Rachel suggests that they should all go and have coffee together, Mathew like always made a spontaneous joke asking, “Sure, where?”. This again was the clip the directors chose.
To conclude, Actors came up with their own jokes. Every joke cracked by them is always a delight for us. Check the link to know other unscripted scripts here.
