Every Friends fanatic loves The One Where No One’s Ready.
Almost entirely taking place in Monica’s apartment, the episode follows the gang as they try to get ready for a fancy dinner at Ross’ work, with various obstacles stopping them from doing so. In fact, it’s so popular that Rolling Stone placed it at number 3 in their top 50 rankings of Friends episodes.
The episode is filled with iconic moments, from Monica obsessing over a voicemail left by her ex-boyfriend Richard to Joey and Chandler battling over a chair (and the cushions on it).
However, the scene everyone really remembers comes when Joey pays Chandler back for stealing all of his underwear by putting on every single item in his roommate’s wardrobe, and caps it all off by performing some lunges.
But what you might not realise is that the scene was inspired by a moment from the writers’ personal lives.
Speaking to Vulture in 2019, Friends producer Greg Malins recalled hearing a story about his friend coming home to find his roommate wearing all of his clothes.
Apparently, said friend had put all of his clothes into a plastic bag and his roommate had decided to, uh, pleasantly surprise him by emptying the entire contents and sporting them himself.
Even the roomate’s declaration of “look! I’m wearing all your clothes!” would eventually be adapted into the Friends script.
Meanwhile, The Guardian also published its own piece about the history of Friends this week, which revealed that the famous scene with Ross’ leather trousers was also based on a real-life event.
Writer Adam Chase said: “I was talked into buying an inordinately expensive pair, which I proceeded to never wear.”
The rest, as we know, went on to become Friends history.
Friends is available to stream on Netflix now.
