I'll Be There For You: The ultimate book for Friends fans everywhere. Kelsey Miller

about rejection or failure or credit card debt. She expected to be welcomed and so she was. She expected coffee, and so it appeared in her hand (“Sweet’N Low?”). Aniston thought of those Upper East Side girls who walked around Manhattan like they owned it, or they could with one swipe of their Amex. She knew Rachel like the back of her hand, because she’d grown up watching her, fantasizing about what it would be like to step into her fine shoes.

      Courteney Cox had a degree of clout when she’d asked to read for another role, but it was a gutsy move for someone in Aniston’s position. Still, the producers didn’t have a Rachel, and they hadn’t seen anyone who’d even come close.³² So they agreed to let Aniston give it a shot. “We saw Jennifer,” remembered Bright. “It was like—wow. After all these months and hearing so many people read it, this was the person.” Aniston embodied Rachel so perfectly, embracing both her naïveté and her self-centeredness, without making her a brat. Okay, maybe she was a brat, but not a mean girl. She was selfish, absolutely, but never vicious. There was something about Aniston’s Rachel that made you forgive her, even while rolling your eyes. You wanted to see her get knocked down by reality, because she sure as hell needed it—but you also wanted to see her get up, and grow up.

      “She was, head and shoulders, the best one,” said Crane. It was a gamble, but they had to take it. Aniston got the call that very afternoon. With Littlefield’s support, Bright, Kauffman, and Crane cast Aniston as Rachel, then held their breath to see what happened with Muddling Through. “We asked to see a couple of episodes,” said Bright. “It didn’t have ‘failure for sure’ written on it, like the baggage-handler show. But we felt it was kind of weak.”

      Meanwhile, Friends was looking stronger by the day. Once the cast was at last assembled and the contracts signed, they sat down for the first table-read. That was the moment everyone realized the real casting miracle: these actors weren’t just perfect for their parts, but for each other. There was a palpable energy between them as they began to read. “We were like six pieces of a puzzle that just felt like, okay, this works,” David Schwimmer recalled. They got the show on its feet, running through a rehearsal on the Central Perk set, and when Kauffman saw them together, doing that opening scene for the first time, a chill ran down her spine. “I remember the atmosphere being electric. I knew we had something special.”

      Still, special doesn’t always mean successful. Lisa Kudrow was just as bowled over by her castmates and the magic she felt between them. “Oh, my God,” Lisa Kudrow thought. “Well, this is kind of fun and exciting.” But a sure thing? No way. “There was absolutely no reason to think it was definitely going to go.” A great script and a great team were just two of many more things that had to go right, and like everyone else, Crane was shocked every time they did: “We were always surprised when it kept, like, happening.”

      Even once the pilot was shot and well received, there were still months of uncertainty to come. They’d been given a full season, and so they kept moving right along, shooting “The One with the Sonogram at the End” and “The One with the Thumb.” Meanwhile, Muddling Through came on the air in July 1994. As expected, it wasn’t an immediate hit—nor was it an obvious flop. Burrows approached Aniston on set one day and said, “You know they’re going to pick that show up, just to try to mess with Friends