Was Friends Actually a Copy? The Beloved Sitcom That Beat It to the Screen by a Year

Friends is widely regarded as one of television’s most critically acclaimed sitcoms. During its ten-season run on NBC, Friends averaged 25 million views per week and ranked in NBC’s top ten in viewership each year. The series was nominated for a staggering 69 Primetime Emmy awards and has generated roughly $4 billion since its broadcast debut in 1994, according to Forbes estimates. While the beloved sitcom is inarguably one of the most commercially successful television series of all time, the majority of the show’s success can be attributed to another 90s sitcom, Living Single, which debuted a year prior and served as the model for the storyline of Friends.

Created by Yvette Lee Bowser, Living Single is an American television sitcom that aired for five seasons on the Fox network from August 1993 to January 1998. The series chronicles the lives of six friends who share personal and professional experiences while living in a Brooklyn brownstone; coincidentally, 13 months after the highly successful debut season of Living Single, NBC used the same formula for its own sitcom and aired Friends in 1994. Similarly to Living Single, Friends was centered around the lives of six friends who lived in New York City and resided in the same apartment complex. Aside from the exclusion of Black actors, Friends was essentially a carbon copy of Living Single, and one of NBC’s most blatant replica shows.

Living Single Deserves Credit For Inspiring the Creation of Friends

Fresh off the writing staffs of A Different World and Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, Yvette Lee Bowser was eager to spearhead a television series of her own. The young showrunner found that opportunity when she partnered with the Fox network, which was looking for a flagship show to help improve its ratings. Thus, Living Single, a series based on a group of Black singles in their twenties living in Brooklyn, came to be. Starring Queen Latifah and comedian Kim Coles, Living Single aired on Fox in 1993 and was an immediate, resounding success. In its first season, Living Single bested the fan-favorite sitcom Martin in ratings and ranked as Fox’s No.1 rated television series among Black viewers. Providing a look into Black life and culture through the lens of six relatable characters in their twenties, the series gave viewers an inside look at a lifestyle scarcely found on television.

Following the lives of Khadijah (Queen Latifah), Synclaire (Kim Coles), Maxine or “Max” (Erika Alexander), Overton (John Henton), Regina or “Regine” (Kim Fields), Kyle (T.C. Carson) as they navigate their twenties in a bustling city, the series is filled with funny and wacky adventures. Despite its comical nature, Living Single also served as a model for Black excellence in Hollywood. To dispel negative stereotypes about Black people, the sitcom placed extra emphasis on cultivating an air of Black excellence. Khadijah and Max are best friends who met at Howard University, a prestigious Historically Black College and University. Additionally, the characters’ jobs include stockbroker, attorney, and magazine editor. Positive representation of Black people was central to the show, and the cast was cognizant of the power their portrayals held. In an interview with Blavity, Inc., Erika Alexander noted the importance of representation, saying, “Representation matters … there are people who have come up to me who are in positions of power, whether they are politicians or lawyers that saw Max and Kyle and Khadijah, and saw themselves in those positions.”

Delivering on its comedic promise, each Living Single episode included laugh-out-loud moments and the sitcom perfectly captured the culture and aura of the 1990s. While it never cracked the Top 50 in TV ratings, the sitcom quickly became the fourth highest-rated show aired on Fox among their 12 current series. Despite ranking outside the Top 50, Living Single clearly caught the attention of NBC, who practically copied and pasted the idea on its network with the debut of Friends.

Both sitcoms were centered around a group of six young adults that lived in New York, and Friends even went as far as making the group live in the same apartment complex, just as the friend group in Living Single resided in the same Brooklyn brownstone. Additionally, when asked which show he would have added from the 1993 television slate, former NBC president Warren Littlefield said that he wished he would have bought Living Single for his network, which Living Single star Kim Coles reiterated in an interview with ET. “And strangely, a year later, Friends came on,” Coles said in an interview with ET, adding “the big difference is the melanin.”

Friends Star David Schwimmer Admits Living Single Likely Inspired NBC to Greenlight Friends

During a 2020 interview with UK’s The Guardian, Friends actor David Schwimmer, who played Ross, made a controversial remark that a potential Friends reboot should feature an all-Black or all-Asian cast. Though he later clarified that it was not his intent, the comments seemed to omit, or at the very least ignore the existence of Living Single, which many believe to be the blueprint for Friends. Following his viral remarks, Living Single star Erika Alexander took to Twitter to express her thoughts.

“Hey ⁦@DavidSchwimmer @FriendsTV⁩ – r u seriously telling me you’ve never heard of #LivingSingle? We invented the template! Yr welcome bro,” she tweeted with a winky face. Schwimmer then responded with a Twitter post of his own, where he not only apologized but admitted that Living Single likely inspired NBC to create Friends. “Hi Erika. As you know, I was asked recently in an interview for The Guardian how I felt (for the thousandth time) about a reboot of Friends immediately following a conversation about diversity on the show, and so offered up other possibilities for a reimagining of the show today. I didn’t mean to imply Living Single hadn’t existed or indeed hadn’t come before Friends, which I knew it had. Please remember in an interview quotes are often pieced together and taken out of context, and then these quotes are repurposed in other articles by other people who are trying to be provocative. I was a fan of Living Single, and was not implying Friends was the first of its kind. To my knowledge, Friends (which came out a year later) was inspired by [series creators] Marta [Kaufmann] & David [Crane]’s own lives and circle of friends living in NY in their twenties. If it was based on Living Single you’d have to ask them. It’s entirely possible that Warner Brothers and NBC, encouraged by the success of Living Single, gave the Friends pilot a green light. I honestly don’t know, but seems likely! If that’s the case, we are all indebted to Living Single for paving the way.”

Copycat Projects Are Nothing New In Hollywood

While it appears evident that Friends was heavily influenced by the success and plot of Living Single, it is far from the first (or last) example of copycat projects in Hollywood. Through the years, Disney and Dreamworks have been seen creating strikingly similar films in Antz and A Bug’s Life.

Additionally, Marvel and DC Comics have been known to pull ideas from each other, as more than a few superhero ideas (Deadpool and Deathstroke, Quicksilver and Flash, Moon Knight and Batman) mirror that of its rival brand. Whether wrong or right, successful Hollywood projects will always inspire works in its likeness. Unfortunately, as with Living Single and Friends, the original does not always receive the credit it deserves for setting a standard of excellence.

Living Single Should Be Celebrated as a Pioneer of American Sitcoms

Though NBC will likely never admit its influence to air Friends, Living Single should be celebrated as a pioneer of American sitcoms. Aside from A Different World, which ended in 1993, not many Black sitcoms focused on a group of young, single friends, especially the likes of editor Khadijah James (Latifah), receptionist and aspiring actress Synclaire James-Jones (Coles), lawyer Maxine Shaw (Alexander), gossip Regina Hunter (Fields), handyman Overton Wakefield (Henton) and stockbroker Kyle Barker (Carson).

Overall, the series did an excellent job of highlighting the humorous side of its Black characters without reducing them to stereotypical roles or tropes. Its recipe of spotlighting young, professional adults in a sitcom established a recipe that has been used in Friends and newer sitcoms like Issa Rae’s Insecure, and while it never reached the financial heights of its imitation series Friends, Living Single is undoubtedly one of the most important sitcoms in television’s history and should be celebrated as such.