NBC Tried to Cut a Major Monica Storyline From 'Friends'

When we think of a saucy TV series, Friends isn’t usually our first thought, but it turns out that, back in 1994, some of the beloved series’ content was a little too indecent for some of the suits at NBC.

And by “indecent,” we mean that the female characters had sex… shocking, I know.

Entertainment Weekly reports that this issue almost rewrote part of the show. As you remember, in the very first episode Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) goes on a date with “Paul the wine guy” and ends up sleeping with him after he feeds her a misleading line. Friends co-creator, David Crane, explained in an interview with EW this week that NBC did not take lightly to this kind of storyline.

Crane stated, “When we were doing the pilot, Don Meyer, who was then the head of NBC, took real issue with the fact that Monica sleeps with a guy on the first date. He said, ‘We’re not going to like her!’ But we really held our ground on it.”

Luckily the show was performed in front of a live audience, and after the first run-through, Crane and co-creator Marta Kauffman asked the viewers for feedback. It turns out that everyone still liked Monica, in spite of her night with Paul.

Crane explained that because the audience liked her, Meyer came around. “Then Don [Meyer] got on board because he said, ‘Well I’m okay with it because she gets what she deserves when the guy sort of screws her over.'… I could see the steam coming out of Marta’s nose, and I’m tap-dancing going, ‘But you’re okay with it! So if you’re okay with it then we’re good, let’s move on, yay!'"

As you know, the one-night stand made it into the storyline, and the world survived a woman having a sexual appetite.