Friends forever? Not so, says the show's co-creator Marta Kauffman. Debunking a Star Media report claiming NBC was planning to revive the hit comedy for an eleventh season in 2014, the 56-year-old assured E! News the cast — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer — will not be reprising their TV roles.
"I'm going to clear this up right now — no, it's not happening!" she exclaimed. Kauffman, who co-created the show with David Crane, said she heard the latest reunion rumor while at a bar with the show's costume designer.
Kauffman added that Friends will never get the big screen treatment a la other TV shows like Sex and the City and Entourage. "Friends was about that time in your life when your friends are your family and once you have a family, there's no need anymore," she explained. "I'd rather people go, 'Oh, please! Please!' than 'I can't believe you did that. It was horrible.'"
Aniston, 44, wouldn't be game for a film reunion, either. "I can't imagine how you would do it, unless you did it years from now," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. "I can't imagine what that would be. It's not normal. Friends is in your living room; Friends is not in a movie theater. It doesn't make sense to me. I think it would be going against its authentic self."
In a 2012 interview with Us Weekly, Perry explained why the show continues to resonate with audiences nearly a decade after the show ended its 10-season run. "I think people just loved it, you know? It was really good writing, really good acting, over a very long period of time, and that's rare," he said. "It was just a different era in television. Thirty million people were watching it every week which, you know, is insane. That will probably never happen again."
Perry, who recently reunited with Cox on his freshman NBC comedy Go On, added that he doesn't watch reruns on TV. "I watch some of the outtakes sometimes online because it's just us laughing and having fun, and that's nice," the 43-year-old told Us. "I look back at it very fondly."
The cast has continued to support each other's projects since Friends went off the air. LeBlanc will appear on the new season of Kudrow's Showtime hit Web Therapy; Cox and Schwimmer have previously appeared on the series. Aniston has also made guest appearances on Cox's Cougar Town and Dirt.
