‘Friends’ Turns 30: All the Actors Who Almost Played the Central Perk Pals
In some alternate universe, Friends premiered 30 years ago with Tiffani Thiessen, Leah Remini, Kathy Griffin, Vince Vaughn, Jon Cryer, and Eric McCormack playing Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross, respectively.
Those actors and many others circled the six leads on the NBC sitcom before Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer landed the parts and made Friends into a TV mega-hit.
In honor of the show’s 30th anniversary on September 22, here we present 12 actors who were contenders for Friends’ over-caffeinated Central Perk gang.
Tiffani Thiessen (Rachel Green)
After playing a high-schooler on Saved by the Bell, Thiessen almost played twenty-something Rachel on Friends. “I was just a little too young. I was a little too young [compared to] the rest of them,” she said on the podcast You Up With Nikki Glaser in 2018, per Entertainment Weekly.
Jane Krakowski (Rachel Green)
Krakowski beat Aniston for a role on the soap Search for Tomorrow, but then Aniston beat Krakowski for the part on Friends, as the 30 Rock alum told People in 2020. “It was just one of those shows that everybody wanted to get an audition for and be on. And wisely so. It was a show of a generation,” she added.
Téa Leoni (Rachel Green)
Leoni was the first choice to play Rachel on Friends, the New York Post reported in 2011. She passed on the show, per Vulture, but found success with films like Bad Boys and Deep Impact and the TV show Madam Secretary.
Janeane Garofalo (Monica Geller)
“When we originally wrote the role, we had Janeane Garofalo’s voice in our head. Darker and edgier and snarkier,” co-creator David Crane told Vanity Fair in 2012. But the Wet Hot American Summer star lost the part, with Crane explaining that Cox “brought a whole bunch of other colors to it [which] week after week … would be a lovelier place to go to.”
Nancy McKeon (Monica Geller)
This Facts of Life alum was in the running for Monica, too, and even read for the part. “She gave a terrific performance,” former NBC casting head Lori Openden told Vanity Fair. “[Warren Littlefield, former NBC president] let [Marta Kauffman, Friends co-creator] and David make the call. They went off for a walk and came back and said Courteney.”
Leah Remini (Monica Geller)
This King of Queens star had a guest appearance on Friends in 1995 but nearly had a much larger part. “I had auditioned for the role of Monica,” she told MediaVillage in 2016. “As an actress, you go [to] each audition thinking, ‘This could change my life. I could get my car out of repo or get a nice apartment that’s not backed up to a bar in Hollywood,’ so everything rides on those moments. I was devastated that I didn’t get it. We all knew it would be a huge hit. We just knew it.”
Kathy Griffin (Phoebe Buffay)
The stand-up comedian mentioned in a 2012 interview with HuffPost that she thought she met Jane Lynch when they were both “auditioning for Phoebe on Friends, like all my other girlfriends did.” (Lynch, for her part, told HuffPost Live in 2015 that it was a “Hollywood urban myth” that she auditioned to play the “Smelly Cat” singer.)
Hank Azaria (Joey Tribbiani)
This Simpsons actor eventually played Phoebe’s love interest David on the show, though he really wanted to play Joey. “Matthew Perry is actually a very dear friend of mine, and so we all read the script. We didn’t know it was going to be the huge phenomenon it turned into, but we knew it was great, and so we were all so desperate to be in it,” Azaria said on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2021. “And I auditioned for Joey and didn’t get it, and I was like, ‘No, I have to go back, I have to try again.’ So I bullied my way back in for a second time, and they were very kind and watched my audition and then threw me out.”
Vince Vaughn (Joey Tribbiani)
Casting director Ellie Kanner’s notes showed that this Old School actor tried out for the part of Joey, as Kanner told HuffPost in 2015. He was “handsome and tall” and a “good actor” but didn’t match the part like LeBlanc did. “That would have been a little different,” she added. “It’s just a matter of putting the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Jon Favreau
Jon Cryer (Chandler Bing)
Cryer found success on Two and a Half Men after a near-miss with Friends. “I was doing a play in London and got a call at 3 a.m. saying, ‘We’ve got this show called Six of One, and we’d really like you to audition for it,’” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2003. “So they faxed me the script, and I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to go in on this.’ I went in and read with a British casting person; they took the tape and said they’d get it to L.A. So I went home, and a few days later was told the tape didn’t get there in time for the network executives to see. … So that was my pathetic stab at Chandler Bing.”
Eric McCormack (Ross Geller)
A few years before joining Will & Grace, McCormack threw his hat in the ring for another hit NBC sitcom. “I went out for Schwimmer’s role on Friends,” the actor told Vanity Fair in 2012. “Years later I told [director James Burrows] the story, and he said, ‘Honey, you were wasting your time. They wrote the part for Schwimmer.’”
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