Jerry Seinfeld Jokes About “Seinfeld” and “Friends” Similarities: ‘Why Don’t We Try the Same Thing with Good-Looking People?’

'Seinfeld' ran from 1989 to 1998, while 'Friends' aired from 1994 until 2004

NEED TO KNOW

• Jerry Seinfeld poked fun at the similarities between his own sitcom, Seinfeld, and Friends as he took the stage at the Netflix Is a Joke Presents Jerry Seinfeld event on Tuesday, May 5
• “I think NBC was watching my show and said, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’ ” the comedian joked of his show airing just before Friends
• Seinfeld ran from 1989 to 1998, while Friends aired from 1994 until 2004

Jerry Seinfeld is poking fun at the comparisons between Friends and Seinfeld.

Speaking on stage at the Netflix Is a Joke Presents Jerry Seinfeld event, held at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 5, Seinfeld, 72, mentioned the similarities between Friends and his own sitcom, which ran from 1989 to 1998. 

Seinfeld joked on stage, “Here’s my theory on Friends … My show came on [1989]-90. Friends came on a few years later.” 

“I think NBC was watching my show and said, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’ " he added during the event of his own NBC sitcom, which also followed the lives of a group of friends in New York City.

By the end of its 10-season run, Friends — which aired from 1994 until 2004 — was one of the highest-rated television shows of all time. 

The beloved sitcom, which also aired on NBC, famously starred Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, the late Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox and Matt LeBlanc in the lead roles.

Meanwhile, Seinfeld starred Seinfeld alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Jerry Stiller, Wayne Knight and more, while Larry David co-created and wrote the sitcom with Seinfeld, before going on to star in the later seasons.

This isn’t the first time Seinfeld has poked fun at Friends.

In 2024, a character in a satirical Pop-Tarts video starring Seinfeld said at one point in the clip, "Tell me, how does it feel when people steal your ideas and then do whatever they want with them?”

“You mean like Friends?” Seinfeld quipped.

Seinfeld’s latest comments about his sitcom came a day after he and David, 78, discussed the show's rocky start during a live taping of Ari Emanuel and Ben Persky’s The Rushmore Podcast on Monday night, per The Hollywood Reporter. The event had also been part of the Netflix Is a Joke festival.

The idea for the sitcom came about after Seinfeld and David met as stand-up comics, with them both sharing stories and thinking, “If we put this in a show, it’d be hilarious,” Seinfeld said during the taping, according to the outlet.

The pair joked about the show’s first episode order being just four episodes, with David saying it was the “smallest order in the history of television,” THR reported.

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Emanuel commented on the fact that the show kept shifting time slots before eventually landing the prime spot at 9 p.m. on a Thursday. “Can we just say we had a rocky beginning and move on?” Seinfeld quipped, per THR.

Seinfeld also mentioned Seinfeld’s slow start as he paid tribute to the late Rob Reiner in December, following the director and his wife Michele Singer Reiner’s tragic deaths.

Reiner’s Castle Rock Entertainment produced the series.

Seinfeld recalled how the prolific filmmaker saved the comedian’s sitcom from the brink of cancellation, writing in an Instagram post, "Our show would have never happened without him.”

"He saw something no one else could. When nobody at the network liked the early episodes, he saved us from cancellation,” he added at the time.

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