Seinfeld Says Friends Was NBC Copying Him With ‘Good-Looking People’

Jerry Seinfeld has a theory about Friends — and he’s not exactly shy about sharing it.

Performing Tuesday night at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles as part of the Netflix Is a Joke festival, the 72-year-old comedian was setting up a bit about infomercials when he asked the crowd to shout out their guesses for his all-time favorite TV show. The audience threw out plenty of options — including his own iconic NBC sitcom — and Seinfeld used the moment to go somewhere unexpected.

“Here’s my theory on Friends,” he told the crowd. “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 wasn’t done. “And that was a pretty good idea. I think that kind of worked.”

The audience loved it. And honestly? He’s not entirely wrong to draw the comparison. Both shows followed a tight-knit group of single friends navigating life in New York City, both aired on NBC, and both became defining sitcoms of their era. Seinfeld debuted in July 1989 and ran nine seasons with Jerry, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards. Friends launched in September 1994 — five years later — and ran ten seasons with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer.

This Isn’t the First Time Seinfeld Has Taken His Credit

If this feels familiar, it should. Seinfeld has been quietly — and not so quietly — planting his flag on Friends‘ success for years.

In 2022, Lisa Kudrow revealed to the Daily Beast that she once had a run-in with Seinfeld where he walked up and simply said, “You’re welcome.” A confused Kudrow asked what he meant, and he explained: “You’re on after us in the summer, and you’re welcome.” She laughed it off, but the moment stuck.

Then in 2024, while promoting his Netflix film Unfrosted, Seinfeld appeared in a satirical Pop-Tarts video. When a character asked him, “Tell me, how does it feel when people steal your ideas and then do whatever they want with them?” — Seinfeld deadpanned back: “You mean like Friends?”

Each time, it lands somewhere between genuine grievance and self-aware comedy. This week’s Greek Theatre version felt like the most fully formed version of the bit yet — less pointed, more generous. “I think that kind of worked” is about as gracious as Seinfeld gets on the subject.

The Night Before: Seinfeld and Larry David Revisit the Rocky Beginning

The Greek Theatre performance came the night after Seinfeld and his Seinfeld co-creator Larry David sat down together for a live taping of Ari Emanuel and Ben Persky’s The Rushmore Podcast, also part of the Netflix Is a Joke festival, held at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. The audience included Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, former Castle Rock Entertainment head Alan Horn, and former NBC entertainment president Warren Littlefield.

The two walked through the show’s surprisingly humble origins. David and Seinfeld met as stand-up comedians and started thinking that their conversations — if translated to screen — “would be hilarious.” Their first episode order beyond the pilot? Four episodes. David called it “the smallest order in the history of television.” The budget came out of NBC’s variety specials fund, which meant someone had to call Bob Hope and tell him he wasn’t getting his Christmas special that year.

The Playbill for the event featured an actual research report from the pilot’s original test screening. The notes were brutal: “No segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again.” Viewers called Jerry’s life “boring,” labeled George a “loser,” and said Jerry “needed a better backup ensemble.”

David admitted that when they were told early on the show probably wasn’t getting picked up, his reaction was relief. “I was thrilled,” he said — because he felt he had “no more stories left to tell.” It was a feeling, he added, that returned “after every season of Seinfeld and every season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The show’s path to its iconic Thursday 9 p.m. time slot wasn’t smooth either — it kept getting shuffled around before landing there. “Can we just say we had a rocky beginning and move on?” Seinfeld quipped as Emanuel kept cataloguing the early struggles.

The duo also shared the origin of Elaine, the character Julia Louis-Dreyfus would make legendary. She wasn’t in the pilot at all. “We were single guys,” Seinfeld explained. “We couldn’t write relationships. We didn’t know anything about it.” David based the character on Monica Yates — daughter of author Richard Yates — an ex he’d stayed friends with. Making her an ex rather than a love interest was deliberate, Seinfeld noted: it removed the “will they or won’t they” tension entirely.

The evening wrapped with super-fans who’d won a trivia contest getting to ask their own questions. When one got a little too comfortable with the mic and tried to riff, David cut him off with characteristic bluntness: “You’re letting this go to your head a little bit.”

As for Friends itself — the show that Seinfeld has spent years half-crediting himself for — it ended its run with six Emmy wins from 62 nominations and a permanent place in the cultural conversation. Seinfeld took home 10 Emmys from 68 nominations. Both shows, as the man himself might put it, kind of worked.