Keep ahead of your fellow Friends fans by committing these little known facts to memory:

1. Original names for the show included “Once Upon a Time in the West Village”, “Across the Hall”, and “Friends Like Us” before deciding on “Friends”.

2. Original storylines focused around only six of the friends – Monica, Ross, Rachel, and Joey. Producers were so pleased with the performances of Phoebe and Chandler that they added them more prominently to the show.

3. In the first couple of episodes Chandler and Joey’s apartment number was #4 and Monica and Rachel’s apartment number was #5. However, in the later episodes, they are 19 and 20 respectively because the producers noted that 4 and 5 corresponded to apartments on lower floors and the Friends’ apartments were higher up the building.

4. Courteney Cox was originally asked to play Rachel, but she asked to play Monica instead after reading the parts.

5. None of the scenes in Friends were ever shot in New York.

Former ‘Friends’ co-star supports move behind camera

Courteney Cox has said she supports Jennifer Aniston’s ambition to move into directing. Her former Friends co-star recently spoke of preparing to direct a new project she is working on.

Cox told E! that Aniston would make a great director. “She’s already directed a short film, [Room 10, co-starring Robin Wright and Kris Kristofferson]. She’s amazing. It would be great,” she said.

Aniston had previous spoken to The Sun of her plans to “change direction” in the future.

“I have a project in development I’m going to direct,” she said. “After you get enough movies under your belt you sit back and go, ‘What’s next?’

“It’s getting to a time where creatively I want to turn in a different direction.”

by Lisa Schwarzbaum

If I were Phoebe Buffay on Friends, strumming my guitar at Cafe Nervosa Central Perk, I would sing an ode to Lisa Kudrow, O Lisa Kudrow, the one Friend I would love to friend in real life! The elegantly funny, expressive performer — super-smart about playing less-than-self-aware women, and empathetic in her  portrayal of exasperated ladies — can currently be seen in the droll, way-too-overworked indie Paper Man, about a middle-aged novelist who can’t write. Actually, Kudrow mostly can’t be seen, since the movie is in such limited theatrical release. But when Paper Man comes to Netflix, where it belongs, I commend it to your queue: The story is labored (like a failed novel), but Jeff Daniels (as the struggling author), Emma Stone (as a local lass), and Ryan Reynolds (as an imaginary superhero) are delightful. And as the novelist’s surgeon wife, managing adult life chores while her husband wallows in a suspended adolescence, the glorious Lisa K does that thing she does best: She plays a woman whose conversation suggests there are far more interesting things going on her head than what might come out her mouth.

With an emotional palette chosen to suit the movie, the result is the creation of a character who is a serious, competent wife trying to make sense of a husband apparently regressing into childishness.  But shade her performance another way, and Kudrow becomes hilariously self-involved, blithely unreliable therapist Dr. Fiona Wallice in the tasty, bite-sized online comedy Web Therapy. Kudrow developed this genius little slice of web madness with Don Roos, the creatively like-minded filmmaker in whose features (including The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings) the actress regularly appears. As reported on Deadline Hollywood, in an interesting loop-the-loop of mediums, Showtime has announced it will be broadcasting episodes of Web Therapy on cable TV next year. That’s great news for the army of fans who think of Kudrow as our pal, too.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Lisa Kudrow says she was never really cut out to play naive young women.

Luckily, she hasn’t had to in a busy post “Friends” career that has seen her become a viable force as an actress and producer in television, Internet and independent film.

“Let’s face it, I was never a great ingenue to begin with,” said Kudrow, now 46. “I always knew I’d have to do either my own stuff or play interesting character roles.”

Kudrow gained fame playing ditzy blonde Phoebe on “Friends” for 10 years. By the time the show ended in 2004, the cast was earning a $1 million dollars each per episode.

This paycheck made Kudrow and her co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox not only the highest paid TV actresses of all time but gave them the luxury of choice in the future.

“That show did nothing but afford us opportunity forever after,” says a grateful Kudrow.

Kudrow’s latest movie is alongside Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone in the independent movie “Paper Man,” which opens in U.S. movie theaters on Friday.

“This was a better version of the (traditional) wife character,” says Kudrow. “I liked the idea of how one girl’s charming guy is a wife’s huge burden.”

GIVING BACK TO TELEVISION

Film work is just one facet of Kudrow’s busy professional life.

She recently executive produced and appeared in the genealogy TV reality series “Who Do You Think You Are?”. The NBC network has already picked it up for a second season.

It is based on the long running British documentary series of the same name where celebrities journey to trace his or her family tree.

“I’m really proud to have brought the show to the U.S. and that it’s my contribution to television,” says the actress, whose own episode was not without trepidation.

Learning about her Jewish heritage involved visiting an Eastern European concentration camp where her great-grandparents and others family members were massacred. It’s a trip she had avoided in the past, preferring to keep “an emotional distance because it’s too overwhelming to know that that kind of horror exists.”

The experience brought many feelings to the surface before Kudrow ultimately made peace with the reality of what happened to her family.

“What’s important is that I survived it and I’m here to carry on,” she said.

In carrying on her family name and heritage, the actress has made her own history in the entertainment industry.

During the “Friends” 10-year run, Kudrow got married, had a son, and starred in such films as “Analyze This,” and “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” among others.

Today, her improvisational acting chops are showcased on-line in the web series, “Web Therapy,” which is now in its third season. Kudrow plays a not-very-professional therapist who conducts sessions via web cam.

Earlier this year, Kudrow reunited with “Friends” co-star Cox as a guest on Cox’s ABC television comedy “Cougar Town.”

“At first I wondered what that would be like because it wasn’t Monica and Phoebe anymore,” she says. “But we didn’t miss a beat.”

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)

The entire team of “Cougar Town” is running behind Jennifer Aniston to rope her in for the sitcom. The associates of the US television sitcom want Jennifer to be a part of the show by making a guest appearance. But does Jen approve the idea?

E!Online and Hispanic Business report that the crew members of the sitcom “Cougar Town” are eager to see Jennifer Aniston to make a guest appearance in the US television sitcom which premiered on ABC on 23rd September 2009.

Bill Lawrence of “Cougar Town” says that he wishes to see Aniston in a guest appearance. Similar are the thoughts of Busy Philipps who wants to act with Jennifer in the TV series. During the 31st Annual College Television Awards in Hollywood, Philipps told that she had known Aniston through Courteney Cox and felt that Jen was the perfect costar.

With the hope and wish of the entire cast and crew of “Cougar Town”, how about Jen really agreeing to work in the show? Wouldn’t it be just great to catch Courteney and Jennifer together once again after the mega-serial “Friends”?

Cox, 45 and Aniston, 41 have worked together as costars for one of the most successful American sitcoms, Friends. And both are good friends on personal front too. Both Cox and Jennifer have always maintained to be pretty close to each other since long and there seems to be a good chemistry between the two.

Cox plays a recently divorced single mother of a teenager and wants back love in her life. She is a successful real estate agent in Florida who wants to date younger men but ends up men of her own age! She is optimistic about finding true love for herself someday.

With Jen’s entry into the show, it might take a completely new twist in the plot for a better response and raised TRP. After all who wouldn’t love to watch Jen more frequently?