The Art of Writing Iconic ‘Friends’ Thanksgiving Episodes
Greg Malins, the writer behind two beloved "Friends" Thanksgiving episodes, on meat trifles, turkey heads and the Phoebe/Joey love story that never was.
Welcome to Behind the Episode, a series in which we ask the creative forces behind some of our favorite TV episodes how they brought those stories to life.
Nobody does the holidays quite like Friends. There are holiday armadillos and meat trifles, turkeys worn on heads and troll trophies, Superman costumes and a surprising amount of Jacques Cousteau references. If you’re a diehard fan, there’s also that “it tastes like feet” blooper, which you’ve probably watched more times than you care to admit.
In celebration of the upcoming festivities, I chatted with Friends writer and executive producer Greg Malins about penning two iconic Thanksgiving episodes: “The One With All the Thanksgivings” and “The One Where Ross Got High.” Below, we discuss the Monica and Chandler of it all, David Schwimmer’s improvs, an episode-saving joke, and so much more.
Put on your stretchiest maternity pants and let’s tuck in.
When was the last time you re-watched these episodes?
I hadn’t re-watched “The One with All the Thanksgiving Flashbacks.” That is probably one of the most broad episodes of Friends we’ve ever done.
Down to Phoebe’s arm getting blown off in the flashback…
We just didn’t usually do things like that. We let our freak flag fly with that one.
I’m so curious to hear the origin story behind that episode.
Thanksgiving was always a big episode. I wasn’t there in the first season but [“The One With the Football”] was so memorable and it started this thing where Thanksgiving episodes have to be special. We thought outside the box for episodes like that. Once the idea of flashbacks came up, we got into all of the characters’ past Thanksgivings and how it could relate to Monica and Chandler’s relationship.
I can’t remember where the turkey on the head came from, but somebody said, “Let’s have Joey get his head stuck in a turkey.” We found out very quickly that could never happen in a million years. There is no turkey that could fit a human head inside of it — we had to custom-make a foam turkey.
Were there any pieces of your own life that you brought into those stories?
There’s a point when Chandler and Ross are talking about how they’re going to test out their new fake IDs. One of the names is Rowland Chang and Rowland Chang was, and still is, one of my best friends, a guy I grew up with. He’s a high-powered lawyer in Shanghai now and people will say to him, “We were watching Friends last night and they used your name! What a weird coincidence.” And he’ll say, “It wasn’t a coincidence.”
You also have the beginning of a short-lived romance between Joey and Janine (Elle Macpherson). When it came to Joey's relationships, how much did you want to find the balance between him being a playboy and him finding women who he actually connected with?
You got so much comedy out of him being a player so we didn't get away from that too often but we wanted to balance out his character and make sure there were people he connected with, otherwise he’s just a cartoon. So, we tried to do that sometimes, with Janine and Kathy (Paget Brewster), someone he actually cared about. I loved that he really loved his sisters and all of his friends.
A lot of us were pitching for years that, in the very last episode, it’s revealed that Joey and Phoebe have been sleeping together for the entire series.
Whoa. Why didn’t that end up happening?
It was probably too disruptive and too much of a revisionist history. But in our heads that’s kind of what was happening, even though it was never talked about.
The episode culminates in Chandler telling Monica he loves her for the first time while she’s wearing a turkey on her head. What were some of the conversations around building to that moment?
We knew there was going to be a moment where they said “I love you” [that season] and we were asking ourselves how we could do it — should it be super romantic? When does it happen, during a candle-lit surprise kind of thing? Or we could go really funny. That’s what we ended up going with.
This was all during the time when Monica and Chandler were keeping their romance a secret from the rest of the group — what were some of the joys and challenges of writing that relationship while it was still under wraps?
Well, let me start with this. I thought them getting together was three episodes and that was it. I felt really strongly about it and I argued for it. Everybody else was right.
It shifted for me when people started saying, “We could do this kind of episode, we could do this kind of thing with them, we could have each of the friends finding out individually.” I was like, “Okay, I can see how this could be really great.” Back then, you had to do twenty-four episodes, so you needed stories. You needed stuff that generated stories and Monica and Chandler generated stories.
In the London episode, we were about to film that scene where Monica and Chandler come out from under the covers — Matthew Perry and I were talking and he asked, “How long do you think the audience will react?” I said, “I think it’s going to be 20-30 seconds,” which, when you’re filming in front of an audience, is a huge amount of time. He said, “No way. It’s going to be longer.” And it was. It was, like, 45 seconds.
If you had to pick, do you have a favorite Monica and Chandler moment that you wrote?
There’s a lot. One that pops into my head is from “The One with the Holiday Armadillo” episode … Chandler comes dressed up as Santa and Monica asks if he can keep the suit one more day. He says, “Santa, really?” and she says, “Yeah.” It was one of those jokes I just walked into. He asks if her dad dressed up as Santa and when she says no, he goes, “Then, it’s ok!” I liked that moment. I thought it was really sweet.
Matthew and I stayed close and we were actually working on a project together — he really wanted to do a show for Canadian television based in his hometown. We had broken this whole thing, we had a whole pitch and we had worked together for about a year. He said, “Let me finish the book tour and then we’ll go sell this show. I’ll call you when I’m done with the tour.” The next thing I heard was that he died. It was devastating. This was the first time I watched a whole Friends episode since he passed. The one I watched with the flashbacks was really tough for me. He was just such a fabulous person, a genius at comedy.
We had this thing he and I, and it’s in [“The One With All the Thanksgivings”], where we'd see how many times we could write just the word "okay." and get a huge laugh.
How often were you collaborating with the actors on jokes like that? I was reading an interview you did for Entertainment Weekly, where you talked about how, in “The One Where Ross Got High,” David Schwimmer pitched the line, “It tastes like feet,” about Rachel’s trifle.
It was absolutely not unusual that they pitched ideas. If I remember correctly, David called me over. He was at the table where the trifle was sitting on a plate in front of him and he goes, “Hey, do you think it would be okay if I said, ‘It tastes like feet’?” That’s how he pitched it to me. And I said, “Yes, of course it’s okay. That’s really funny, you should do that.”
I remember Matt and Matthew pitching the idea of them playing foosball but they’re both on the same side and nobody’s on the other side. One of them moves the little man and it goes into [their] goal and Matthew says, “How did we lose that?” It was hilarious and we shot it a bunch of times but it kept being cut for time because it wasn’t related to the story in any way.
There are so many great threads in “The One Where Ross Got High.” Ross is forced to admit to his parents that he smoked pot in college. Rachel accidentally makes a meat trifle. What was the origin story behind those stories?
The network said that Ross couldn’t get high. The story made them super nervous. We made a compromise — somebody in the episode had to say, “Well, what’s the big deal? You don’t do it anymore,” and that was when they okay-ed the story.
The origin of the trifle came from the idea that Rachel was going to make something for Thanksgiving and screw it up. There was confusion [in the writers’ room] over what a trifle was — there were people who thought it was kind of like a shepherd's pie. And we were like, “No it’s a dessert!” I’m not even sure how much internet we had to look this stuff up.
So, we thought, what if she mixes it up? Somebody suggested that the cookbook pages were stuck together. There was a lot of resistance to the idea and there was resistance from writers who didn’t want to write that episode because it had this big thing in it that didn’t make sense at all.
You saved it though! You had the line about it being Chandler’s fault that pages were stuck together.
Yeah. (Laughs) That’s the thing. Get out your information that doesn’t make any sense at all as quickly as possible, immediately tell a joke and move on. That’s a good rule.
We’d ask the cast to do anything and they’d do it, and with commitment they’d do it. I remember telling my wife one time, when I got home, that Phoebe was going to get trapped in a little jail, holding a Civil War gun, and my wife [Jennifer Milmore] was like, “What is he talking about? There’s no way you could make that believable.” But we did. Lisa just did it, and she killed it.
Take [“The One With the Embryos”], that was another one that made no sense. The way we got into the story was, “I can guess your groceries. We know you better than you know us!” Again, just do it really quick.
It must have been so surreal to watch the Friends reunion show and see them all back in the apartment, doing that quiz again.
It was surreal. It’s sometimes surreal just to [see the cast]. I unfortunately saw almost all of them at Matthew’s memorial. It was so great to see them, sad and wonderful. His memorial was on the Friends soundstage — as if they thought people wouldn’t be sad enough.
Wow. I remember walking by the Friends apartment building after he died and just seeing so many drawings and flowers and letters, with people saying how much Chandler and the show has meant to them.
That’s a whole other conversation to have. Nobody had any clue that Friends would have this kind of staying power. My wife was on the show, she was the understudy who dated Joey for a couple of episodes.
Yes! I can so clearly remember her saying “Hi, pig!”
My kids were in sixth grade and their friends were coming up to Jenny saying, “We saw you on TV last night!”
I mean the school street cred I feel like they must get…
Yeah, I think they do get street cred.
There’s such a warmth and comfort baked into the DNA of Friends. I’m curious what it was about Marta Kauffman and David Crane’s writing style that fostered that feeling?
Marta and David were very big on emotion. The emotional stories were the ones that were going to resonate and be the best stories.
They taught me how to write. They taught all of us. You know, that writing staff was in their 20s for the most part, and every part of our lives was in that show. I put everything into that show by the end. Joey putting on Chandler’s clothes — that happened to me. Chandler pretending he wasn't into marriage so he could surprise Monica — I did that to my wife for a year.
There’s really something special about Friends that makes you want to turn to it during those low moments of life. I distinctly remember when multiple breakups were happening in college you would hear the Friends theme song coming from each person’s door, including mine.
That’s the purpose of that show, it’s the show you put on after you watch Silence of the Lambs and you just want to be able to go to sleep. That’s what it’s for. That’s its job. And I’m glad it still exists to do that.
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I live for the trifle! But the Phoebe/Joey tidbit is 🤯
This is fabulous, Thea ❤️