Jerry Seinfeld accuses ‘Friends’ of copying ‘Seinfeld’

Jerry Seinfeld is doubling down on his stance that the beloved sitcom Friends basically rode the coattails of the one he created beforehand, Seinfeld.

The comedian was doing crowd work at a recent show and asked the audience to guess his all-time favourite show, to which one member replied Friends.

During the 2026 Netflix Is a Joke Festival amid his set at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles the Seinfeld star replied, “My show [‘Seinfled’] came on — ’89, ’90. ‘Friends’ came on a few years later.”

“I think NBC was watching my show and went, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’ And that was a pretty good idea. I think that kind of worked,” he added.

The shows both follow a group of close friends navigating life in New York City, with the only difference being that the one featuring Monica, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Pheobe and Joey was more character-centric whereas the latter was famously a show about nothing.

This is not the first time Seinfeld has shaded Friends, as Lisa Kudrow, a member of the cast from the latter revealed that the 72-year-old had once walked up to her at a party in the ‘90s and had said that she was welcome referring to the success of the 1994 show.

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