Was Friends inspired by Seinfeld? Jerry Seinfeld thinks so

Jerry Seinfeld has suggested that Friends was inspired by his own show.

Jerry Seinfeld thinks Friends was inspired by his eponymous sitcom.

The 72-year-old comedian starred on Seinfeld, his hit TV sitcom, between 1989 and 1998, and Jerry believes that NBC tried to replicate the success of his own show when they launched Friends in 1994.

He told the Netflix Is a Joke festival at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles: “My show came on — ’89, ’90. Friends came on a few years later.”

He continued: “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.”

Jerry also joked about why he would never watch his own show.

He said: “I am Seinfeld. Why would I watch Seinfeld? Would you go up to your bathroom mirror and go, ‘This is fantastic. I love this show. I’m in every episode.'”

Meanwhile, Jerry previously admitted that he was “wrong” to blame the “extreme left” for killing comedy.

The TV star caused a stir when he argued TV comedy was in crisis because writers worried too much about “offending other people”, but he subsequently backtracked on his comments.

Appearing on Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast, Jerry explained: “I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true. It’s not true.

“If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and you’re going to make the gate. That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is, ‘where is the gate, how do I make the gate and get down the hill the way I want to?’

“Does culture change? And are there things that I used to say that I can’t say because people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest, easiest target.

“You can’t say certain words, whatever they are, about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that, to just be a comedian … so I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now, officially. They have not.”