Jerry Seinfeld says “Friends” is just “Seinfeld” with 'good-looking people'

Kathleen PerriconeWed, May 6, 2026 at 9:50 PM UTC

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Jerry Seinfeld; 'Friends' cast
Credit: Getty; EverettKey Points -

Jerry Seinfeld joked about the similarities between his sitcom, Seinfeld, and Friends while headlining the Netflix Is a Joke festival.

The comedian shared his theory that the show was “the same thing with good-looking people.”

Friends premiered five years after Seinfeld and aired for 10 seasons until 2004.

Jerry Seinfeld thinks Friends is just a carbon copy of his own NBC sitcom — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The comedian shared his theory on the beloved TV series while headlining Netflix Is a Joke Presents Jerry Seinfeld on Tuesday night at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

'Seinfeld' starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, and Jerry Seinfeld
Credit: NBC/Getty

“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.

As he pointed out, Seinfeld premiered on the network in 1989, five years before Friends. Also a show about a close-knit group living in New York City, Friends made an immediate cultural impact, yada yada yada.

David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow on 'Friends'
Credit: Warner Bros. Television

However, it didn’t quite duplicate the same viewership as Seinfeld, which pulled in 76.3 million for its 1998 finale compared to Friends’ 52.5 million six years later.

It seems there’s some truth in Seinfeld’s jest about the cast of his eponymous sitcom.

The comedian sat down with Seinfeld co-creator Larry David to look back at their iconic “show about nothing” for a live taping of The Rushmore Podcast, as part of the ongoing Netflix Is a Joke festival.

The pilot episode, a mix of Seinfeld’s stand-up comedy and everyday life, was not well-received by test audiences, they revealed. NBC’s research report noted viewers found George Costanza (Jason Alexander) to be a “loser” and Jerry “boring.” Overall, “no segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again,” asserted the feedback, which Rushmore co-host Ben Persky read aloud.

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“Can we just say we had a rocky beginning and move on,” Seinfeld joked.

The only female character, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), was added to the cast after the pilot episode. “We were single guys,” Seinfeld said. “We couldn’t write relationships. We didn’t know anything about it.” So they based Elaine on David’s ex-girlfriend Monica Yates, the daughter of novelist Richard Yates.

Michael Richards, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jason Alexander
Credit: NBC/Getty

As the theme of The Rushmore Podcast, Seinfeld and David revealed their top four episodes of Seinfeld.

They both agreed on “The Contest,” the Emmy-winning episode that watched Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer (Michael Richards) compete to see who was the true “master of their domain” so to speak.

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Seinfeld also picked “The Soup Nazi,”“The Merv Griffin Show,” and “The Marine Biologist.”

As for David, he settled on “The Opposite,”“The Puffy Shirt,” and “The Pen,” incidentally the only episode in which George and Kramer do not appear.

on Entertainment Weekly

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