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During the 2026 Netflix Is a Joke Festival, Jerry Seinfeld stirred some playful controversy by suggesting that the beloved sitcom “Friends” drew inspiration from his own legendary show, “Seinfeld.” This lighthearted claim was made during his performance at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter.
In a humorous segment of his routine, Seinfeld engaged the audience by asking them to guess his favorite television show of all time. When someone in the crowd called out “Friends,” the comedian seized the opportunity to share his theory about the popular series that featured stars like Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and the late Matthew Perry.
Seinfeld reflected on the timeline, pointing out that his sitcom debuted in 1989-1990, while “Friends” premiered a few years thereafter. He jokingly suggested, “I think NBC was watching my show and thought, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’ And that was a pretty good idea,” he concluded with a chuckle. “I think that kind of worked.”
“My show [‘Seinfled’] came on — ’89, ’90. ‘Friends’ came on a few years later,” he noted.
“I think NBC was watching my show and went, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’ And that was a pretty good idea,” he continued. “I think that kind of worked.”
“Seinfeld” — which starred the titular comedian as well as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards and Jason Alexander — premiered on NBC in 1989 and ran for nine seasons.
“Friends” debuted in 1994 and aired for 10 seasons on NBC.
Both shows revolved around a close group of friends living in New York City, though “Friends” was story and character-centric while “Seinfeld” was famously dubbed a “show about nothing” by Seinfeld himself and co-creator Larry David.
This isn’t the first time Seinfeld has taken credit for the success of “Friends.”
Kudrow told the Daily Beast in 2022 that Seinfeld once walked up to her at a party in the ’90s and told her “you’re welcome,” as “Friends” had been put on NBC’s schedule right after ratings juggernaut “Seinfeld.”
Last month, Kudrow revealed the “Friends” cast still gets a whopping $20 million a year from residuals, more than two decades after the hit sitcom came to an end in 2004.
But she noted in the same interview that their experience filming wasn’t always positive, and that “there was definitely mean stuff going on behind the scenes.”
“Don’t forget we were recording in front of a live audience of 400, and if you messed up one of these writers’ lines or it didn’t get the perfect response, they could be like, ‘Can’t the bitch f–king read? She’s not even trying. She f–ed up my line,’” she recalled to the Times of London.
Kudrow also claimed that the writers’ room, which was composed of mostly men, would “be up late discussing their sexual fantasies” about Aniston and Cox. She recalled the time as “intense.”