In a world where everything from Murphy Brown to Gilmore Girls to Will & Grace has scored a revival, some fans have wondered why uber-popular sitcom Friends has yet to do the same. After all, the show's premise — a group of pals hang out in a Village cafe, then get into hijinks — is pretty evergreen, and many members of the cast still hang out in real life.
So, who is here to kill our dreams of Friends 2.0.? One of the show's creators, Marta Kauffman, has a fair point about why Friends should stay perfectly preserved.
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In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Kaufman makes it clear that there's no Friends reboot in the works, and for good reasons.
"There are several reasons [why I don't want to do a Friends reboot.] One, the show is about a time in your life when your friends are your family. It’s not that time anymore. All we’d be doing is putting those six actors back together, but the heart of the show would be gone," Kaufman told the outlet. "Two, I don’t know what good it does us. The show is doing just fine, people love it. [A reunion] could only disappoint. 'The One Where Everyone’s Disappointed.'"
In a 2016 interview with British talk show Lorraine, star Jennifer Aniston echoed the statement. In addition to the characters growing up, the world has changed significantly.
"I think that period of time was nostalgic," said Aniston in 2016. "Our faces weren't stuffed into cell phones, we weren’t checking Facebook and Instagram. We were in a room together, we were in a coffee shop talking and having conversations. We've lost that."
Yes, Friends would not look the same in 2019 as it did in 1994 or even 2004 — but that doesn't mean the idea of six friends leaning on one another is totally outdated. In a 2018 interview with InStyle, the actress gushed over her former sitcom gig and hinted she wouldn't be opposed to it coming back in some capacity.
"Before that show ended, people were asking if we were coming back. Courteney [Cox] and Lisa [Kudrow] and I talk about it," she told the outlet. "I fantasise about it. It really was the greatest job I ever had. I don’t know what it would look like today, but you never know. So many shows are being successfully rebooted."
Maybe a Friends reunion isn't about capturing that same exact magic...but creating a new kind of show with the same heart for a 2019 audience. It may not be on the table right now, but in an age of reboots, we can never say never.