One of the most famous ‘Friends’ moments almost never happened

Throughout its 10-season run, Friends gave us plenty of memorable moments.

The famous ‘pivot!’ scene (which was recently destroyed by science here)  is a popular choice for many people’s favourite, of course, while the show also gave us memorable one-off characters.

However, some of the show’s watershed moments nearly never came to pass.

We already knew about one significant Friends moment which almost ended up not being a moment at all, but now we have a second, even bigger example.

Ross and Rachel’s ‘break’ might be the iconic, quotable part of Friends which even those only vaguely familiar with the show are able to reference.

Regardless of whether you’re one of those people who believes Rachel should have ended up with Joey, the “We were on a break!” scene will be as evocative as they come.

So it’s strange to learn that things could have been very, very different.

“I would say initially when [Ross and Rachel] was planned it wasn’t planned that way, that came a little bit later,” executive producer and director Kevin S. Bright told Metro.

Bright praised the work of creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane in changing tack and drawing things out between Ross and Rachel, rather than settling on a ‘happily ever after’ resolution too early.

“We realised when we got them together when the first kiss happened we go, ‘Wow, the air has kind of gone out of the balloon.’ There wasn’t that sexual tension anymore,” he added.

“I thought what Marta and David did, which was such a brilliant and brave move with their relationship, as soon as everyone got their wish the wish was taken away. It made it so much better when they did get together.” 

Now we’re left scratching our heads over how different the show might have been without this change of direction.

How would it have affected the other four friends? Might we have never seen other love interests like Mona or Tag? Certainly we’d have been unlikely to get the Ross and Emily arc and all that came with their relationship - including the eventual marriage of Monica and Chandler.

We’d have been looking at a show so different it would have been almost unrecognisable.

(Images: Getty)