The ‘incestuous’ Friends storyline the cast didn’t approve of

There was one storyline in particular that the Friends cast pushed back on because “it felt very incestuous to them.”

Looking back on the creation of the seminal sitcom for its 30th anniversary this month, one of the show’s writers, Adam Chase, revealed to The Guardian that the cast was unhappy with the decision to pair off Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) in the later seasons.

“The cast was very much against it,” Chase said. “It felt very incestuous to them.”

Fans will, of course, remember the two characters had a brief dalliance in season nine of NBC’s hit sitcom about a group of twentysomething friends living in New York City.

While goofy, kindhearted Joey and spirited, naive Rachel weren’t actual siblings in the series, their romantic relationship came to an abrupt end when they both realized they were better off as friends.

The pairing proved not only divisive among the cast but with fans as well, as many felt it was “wrong.”

“The Joey/Rachel thing I know is controversial,” Friends co-creator David Crane told RadioTimes in 2019. “I love it. I love it because it’s wrong – and we knew going in: this is wrong. And that happens in life. There is the relationship that shouldn’t be. Even though you love someone, that’s not who you’re going to be with.

“And we loved that it took Joey to a more emotional place, and let Matt play colors that he hadn’t gotten to play yet in the series,” Crane explained at the time.

By the end of the series, Rachel ends up getting back together with Ross (David Schwimmer), her on-again-off-again lover and the brother of her best friend Monica (Courteney Cox).

In recent years, Aniston and Schwimmer have opened up about having had crushes on each other throughout much of the show.

However, according to the show’s only recurring Black guest star Aisha Tyler, who played Charlie, one of Ross’s girlfriends, the two didn’t make it obvious.

“You could see that there was a real friendship and a bond, but they were super professional on that show,” she told The Independent of Aniston and Schwimmer. “Here’s the secret for everybody reading – everybody on shows has crushes on their castmates. I think people always focus on when there’s conflict or drama, but most of the time, it’s kind of like middle school and everybody’s crushing on everybody else.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Tyler remembered the “unbidden moment of emotional generosity” the late Matthew Perry showed her when she first joined the cast.

“On my first live show, Matthew Perry said to me, ‘Get ready for your life to change,’” she recalled, adding: “He gave me a moment of mindfulness to really feel that this was my big break.”