How you doin’? Or more to the point, where you goin’? If you’re headed to New York City as a Friends fan, there are some places you just have to visit. But believe it or not, most scenes in Friends were filmed thousands of miles away from the Big Apple on Hollywood soundstages in Los Angeles, California.
Friends is a beloved sitcom (duh) about characters living in a fun but fictional version of NYC. A lot of the sets were inspired by real New York spaces and some of the shots even featured authentic New York landmarks, but the show itself was filmed almost entirely in Hollywood. For every set dressing and scene scouting choice, careful considerations were made to give the series the most authentic New York vibes possible. It worked on us!
So, how can you tell the real thing from the soundstage while watching Friends or traveling the world? A good rule of thumb is that interiors are artificial, while exterior shots are generally the real deal. If you visit LA, you can take Warner Brothers Studio tours and see a lot of the interior sets constructed for the series. If you take NYC by storm, you can catch glimpses of the real locations that viewers are led to believe the characters spend time in. You might even find yourself in a city with its own #FriendsFest, a celebration of all things Friends. Either way, you don’t need unagi to find your way around the sets and real spaces that make up the Friends world. You just need this handy list! Could it BE any more useful? (Let us know if so!)
Without further delay, here are 10 fictional and 10 real places that belong in the Friends universe.
