Cox was called in early on during the Friends casting process. She was nowhere near as famous as she’d soon become, but she was an established television actress, and much more recognizable than any of her future costars. She’d been working since her late teens, first dabbling in modeling in Manhattan, the summer after graduating from high school. Cox grew up in Mountain Brook, Alabama, but had family connections in New York, thanks to her stepfather, Hunter Copeland. His nephews were drummer Stewart Copeland (of The Police), and music promoter/booking agent Ian Copeland, whom Cox would later briefly date. Cox returned to New York after her freshman year at Mount Vernon College, where she’d been studying architecture. She took a summer job as a receptionist in Ian’s office, and continued to pick up modeling gigs25 and go out on a few commercial auditions. It wasn’t much, but to a nineteen-year-old, it was a more than enough to convince her that this was the place to be. “I just thought, I can always go to college,” Cox recalled, adding that she did sometimes regret not going back later. None of the Friends cast truly “stumbled” into acting, but Cox was perhaps the least likely star, if only because of her practical nature. In many ways, she was a less extreme version of Monica: sharply focused, no nonsense, and even puritanical.
But she was also young, and just as Kudrow had, Cox realized that if there was any time to give this business a shot, it was now. Furthermore, she was getting jobs, she’d been signed to Ford Models, and her nebulous career was picking up speed. Maybe this was the practical choice, at least for the moment, Cox said to herself. “I just thought, I’ll take this ride.”
Cox began taking acting courses and speech classes, to get rid of her Alabama accent. She got a two-day job playing a debutante named Bunny on As the World Turns, and a commercial for New York Telephone. Then one day she was sent out on what she thought was a commercial audition, and wound up in a room with Brian De Palma.
The audition turned out to be for a music video—the one that would make Courteney Cox a famous face (if not yet a famous name). She was cast in the video for Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” where she played a fan who gets pulled out of a concert crowd to dance on stage with The Boss himself. It was her third job.
It’s hard to overstate the cultural relevance of music videos and MTV in the mid-1980s, but suffice it to say that Cox could hardly have landed a bigger big break. The video was everywhere, and so was she. It was almost as if Bruce Springsteen had plucked her out of obscurity and made her a star. From then on, she booked a steady stream of TV gigs, doing guest spots as well as commercials. In 1985, she landed a Tampax ad, in which she famously became the first person ever to say the word period on national television. That, too, got Cox a heap of press, as well as fan mail from women’s advocacy groups who lauded her for daring to mention the menstrual cycle in such straightforward terms. Cox didn’t think it was such a big deal (and, frankly, wasn’t that thrilled to be known as The Girl Who Said Period) but hey, it was work.
Despite those first few hits, Cox spent much of the next decade living on guest spots, tiny film roles, and the occasional pilot. She starred as a telekinetic teenager in the sci-fi drama Misfits of Science, which was canceled during its first season, but gave her just enough financial cushioning to keep going. She landed the recurring part of Alex P. Keaton’s girlfriend during the last two seasons of Family Ties, followed by another starring role on an ill-fated CBS comedy called The Trouble with Larry.26 Then, in 1994, a full decade after the Springsteen video, Cox got another big break. Three, in fact.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective premiered in February, to dismal reviews and massive box-office success. Cox played the female lead and love interest, and now her face was everywhere again, if only because it was next to Jim Carrey’s. The following month, her Seinfeld episode aired. Then her agents called with more big news. The producers from that hot new pilot everyone was talking about wanted her to come in. They had a role for her, and it was great: a cute, funny, slightly spoiled girl from Long Island who ditches her fiancé at the altar and comes to New York to make it on her own.
Yes, Kauffman admitted, “originally, we wanted her to do Rachel.” They hadn’t even considered Cox for Monica. Kauffman and Crane had written that role imagining a voice like Janeane Garofalo’s. Their Monica was tough and defensive—with plenty of heart underneath, of course, but guarded by a hard demeanor and a sharp tongue. Cox had such warmth about her, such a nurturing and almost maternal presence. She just wasn’t Monica.
Cox insisted she was. She got her, this organized, self-reliant woman who kept herself and everyone else in line. She didn’t know yet that Monica had a hypercompetitive streak and a tendency to obsess. Neither did the writers, at that point. Like all the characters, Monica would be shaped by Cox’s performance—her particular talent for playing the hard-ass with a heart of gold, and the full-body commitment with which she threw herself (sometimes literally) into physical comedy. In time, these things would add even more color to the character, creating her drive and high-grade neurosis. But when Cox first read the pilot, all she knew was that she clicked with Monica—in a way that didn’t often happen with sitcom characters. Monica wasn’t an archetype, but a mix of traits and quirks that Cox herself could relate to. She knew this woman, and she liked her.
“She said, ‘No, I’m Monica,’ and she was right,” recalled Kevin Bright. “Trust the actor.” Cox came in to read and hit it out of the park, balancing all of Monica’s sharp edges with a warm, welcoming humor and revealing her complexity, rather than walling it off behind sarcasm. She brought a high-energy vibe to the role that hadn’t been there before, and would soon become Monica’s defining characteristic. She nailed it, and she knew it.
“I remember thinking the role was mine,” recalled Cox.27 She still had to read for the studio and the network, but it was a done deal. Then, on her way in to read for Warner Bros., she stopped in the ladies’ room, where she overheard someone talking in the next stall. Cox froze.
While she’d given a fantastic audition, there was one other actress who also seemed right for Monica. Nancy McKeon, who’d played Jo on the long-running series The Facts of Life, was called in for a reading, and everyone agreed she’d given a great one. On top of that, she had a fan base, having starred in one of the biggest sitcoms of the 1980s. Cox was excellent, and somewhat known, but it might be nice to have a real TV star in the mix. Opinions were split fifty-fifty, so Littlefield left it to Kauffman and Crane. The two of them went for a walk and talked it out. Friends was supposed to be a true ensemble. No lead characters and no star actors. Both Cox and McKeon were wonderful Monicas on their own, but who would be best for the team? They decided to bet on Cox.
There’s no way to know what kind of show Friends would have been had McKeon won the part. But Cox brought something more than her performance to the set—that crucial lesson she’d learned on Seinfeld. Three days into shooting the pilot, she huddled up her castmates and laid it out: if they wanted Friends to be even a tenth as successful as that show, they had to become a unit. The title had changed, but they were still six of one.
“Courteney had said, ‘Look,