I just found out Friends was supposed to have an additional 7th cast member

Friends instantly became a cultural phenomenon and a sitcom titan in the 90s. The show about six twenty-something people navigating careers, relationships, and friendships took the world by storm and changed television forever.

While the sitcom is hailed as a modern comedy pioneer, NBC initially hesitated to adopt the idea from co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane. They even felt the setting of a coffee shop would be too modern for the audiences and wanted the show to be set in a diner instead (like Seinfeld).

NBC also feared that Rachel, Monica, Ross, Phoebe, Chandler, and Joey's young characters would not appeal to mature audiences, so they wanted Kauffman and Crane to include an older character as the seventh friend.

More on the 7th member who was almost cast in Friends in our story.

Pat the cop: I just found out about this 7th cast member on Friends

On Friends' 25th anniversary in 2019, author Saul Austerlitz released Generation Friends, a book chronicling its success and impact. His book revealed that NBC wanted Marta Kauffman and David Crane to have an additional seventh cast member.

The cast member would be older than the core six and was initially written as a police officer, called 'Pat the Cop'. After reviewing the sitcom's Pilot (which was initially called Friends Like Us), NBC feared that the show would not be able to attract mature audiences, and they wanted the creators to add an older character to appeal to a mature audience.

Marta Kauffman and David Crane were reluctant to accommodate NBC's request because an older character would not have fit into the Friends core group. In addition, it would have been weird and nonsensical to have an older guy hang out with them without any prior connection.

However, since NBC was keen on this seventh character, Kauffman and Crane ultimately wrote Pat the Cop into the script and built a storyline around him. The cop was envisioned hanging out with the gang at a movie theatre while the group was in college.

While Pat was not a core Friends character like the other six, he would be a prominent recurring character. The co-creators even cast an actor in the role of Pat, but they ultimately pleaded with the network, and he was written out of the script.

In a 2004 interview with NBC News, Crane reflected on the show's beginnings and Pat:

“At one point we even wrote a draft of an early episode, but it had, oh God, some cop who came in...We were all going, this is terrible.”

Kauffman added:

“You know the kids book, 'Pat the Bunny?' We had Pat the Cop.”

While Kauffman and Crane's disinterest in Pat's character seems visible even after many years, it worked for the best. The show became so popular because of the main characters' chemistry, and I cannot imagine them hanging out with an older cop named Pat.

Another silver lining from Pat the Cop is that his character made way for Monica and Ross's parents, Jack and Judy Geller. Since the network wanted the sitcom to have some older characters, Kauffman and Crane specifically wrote the Geller couple, who eventually became interesting recurring characters on the show.

Jack and Judy Geller's introduction was more natural and fit into the sitcom without being additional core characters on Friends. They made some iconic episodes (like the Season 6 Thanksgiving episode) even more memorable and worked for the best.

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Also Read: I believe Ross' ''We were on a break'' phase in Friends was exhausting

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