Why did Friends end?

Final episode of much-loved sitcom aired on 6 May 2004

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The long-awaited Friends reunion, which was filmed last month, is set to air next Thursday (27 May).

The unscripted special will reunite all six of the main cast members – Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc – along with a host of celebrity guests.

The show arrives 17 years after the final episode of the long-running sitcom was first broadcast on 6 May 2004. At the time it was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most-watched series finale in television history and the most-watched television episode of the 2000s.

Clearly, then, the show went out on a high – so why did creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman call time on the series after 10 seasons?

In a 2014 interview, Crane and Kauffman told Entertainment Weekly that by 2004 there had already been several seasons that they thought could have been the show’s last.

“Because of the actors’ contract negotiations, […] it seemed as though, ‘Oh, season 7 is the last season.’ Or season 8. Or season 9. So each of those seasons we had an eye toward, “Okay, if this is the last year, what are we doing?” explained Crane.

“Season 10, we said, ‘We can’t keep stopping and starting and rethinking everything.’” he continued “And that also jived with what some of the cast was thinking. The only thing we absolutely knew from very early on was that we had to get Ross and Rachel together. We had d**ked the audience around for 10 years with their ‘will they or won’t they’, and we didn’t see any advantage in frustrating them.”

The idea that the show’s storylines were coming to a natural conclusion by the tenth season has been echoed by stars including Lisa Kudrow. “For the writers, I know it was becoming a challenge to keep Ross and Rachel apart,” said Kudrow in a 2014 interview with the Television Academy. “It had been nine years already. And for the cast, some people just felt ready to move on and be done.”

Kudrow added that knowing the final season would be their last made it particularly emotional to shoot. “We shot scenes in between crying, is how it felt,” she said. “It was overwhelming.”