"We're such a big hit, so they decide, 'Hey, you can start off the night at eight and you can lose Jim'--and we're like, 'Wait, wait, it's happening too fast,'" says Aniston, who plays Rachel. "Yes, we've proven ourselves, but I'm nervous about being able to keep it up."
She's not the only one. "I know we'll never be number one in the ratings at eight," says David Crane. "Plus, we have the fear that people might go, 'Oh, they're not as funny as they were last year' or 'I'm tired of them now.'"
"This year," says Kevin Bright, "it's about survival."
And nowhere do the stakes seem as high as among the six cast members, whose witty on-camera rapport is considered essential to the show's success. "What makes the show special is the six of us, the fact that we look like we are having a great time. Because we are," says Perry. "If that messes up, the show is not going to be as good as last year. This is not something we keep in the back of our minds. It's at the front of our minds."
But keeping that good time going may be easier said than done, given all the pressures now hitting the group. Already, Emmy voters have singled out Schwimmer and Kudrow (Pheobe). How did the rest of the group react? "There was about 10 minutes of 'Huh, I wish it were me'," says Perry. "But then you just let it go."
The group's fabled off-camera friendship really does seem more than just network hype. At least, that's what a recent visit to Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. let revealed. There was much of the ebullience and easy confidence one might find among a class of returning high school students, complete with high fives, lots of talk about new haircuts (Cox's, LeBlanc's, and Perry's), and new clothes (Kudrow's new figure-hugging wardrobe), and gossip about who stayed late at the birthday party Perry threw for himself on Saturday night at a chic Hollywood hotel.
Between takes, Cox drapes her arm around Aniston and rubs Kudrow's shoulder. Perry bound about the set cracking jokes and rabbit-punching LeBlanc. Everyone seems to hug everyone at some point. During lunch, they pile into Aniston's Land Rover for a collective escape. Even a discussion of the Emmy nominations falls to generate a grumble. "It could have been terrible," concedes Schwimmer. "But the first call I got was the whole cast waking me up to say I was nominated. They were great about it."
Not that there aren't low moments. Each cast member laments the departure of Burrows--"It was more like losing your dad than a director," says Aniston--and none seem thrilled with the unending stream of increasingly absurd Friends-related tabloid articles.
"This week Kevin Costner is deciding between me and Joan Lunden--its so exciting," cracks Cox, referring to one recent headline. "That's weird. On the other hand, life is basically easier when you're on a hit show. You have a great job and people are nicer to you."
"Yeah, but it's unnerving," says Aniston, curled on the sofa in her dressing room and nodding toward a teddy bear and a volume of Winnie the Pooh that arrived from an anonymous stranger. "This is when I say, 'Jesus, I just want my life back.' But I know it's too late."
Especially now that Hollywood has come courting.
"With a hit show you get offered a lot of things--movies, commercials, personal appearance stuff," says Kudrow, who turned down several "dumb-girl movie roles," as she puts it. "I guess the studios look at what happened with Jim Carrey and Tim Allen when they did films, and they figure, why wait?"
Kudrow and her costars share that attitude. To them, Henry Winkler's inability to shake this Fonzie identify is a far more powerful cautionary tale than David Caruso's controversial departure from NYPD Blue after just one year.
"Each of us likes to believe that we will have careers beyond this," says Schwimmer. "But when a series starts getting into things like a hit record and a music video and mugs and T-shirts... well, I don't want to be known as Ross when I'm 60."