Matt LeBlanc says his Friends co-stars thought it was "wildly inappropriate" when his character began romancing Jennifer Aniston's.
The pair played womanising Joey Tribbiani and ditzy Rachel Green in the popular US TV show. In series nine, Rachel began to develop feelings for Joey.
Matt has now revealed that the cast also comprising Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow didn't approve of the new romance.
"It felt wildly inappropriate," he told Warren Littlefield, the former president of NBC Entertainment, whose book Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV is featured in the May issue of Vanity Fair. "[The cast] got super-defensive about the whole thing."
Matt also spoke about his bond with his former co-stars.
The group worked together on ten seasons of the hit show and they put everything into making it a hit.
"There's only five people in the world who know exactly what being on Friends was like, other than me. There's five of them. David, Matthew, Lisa, Courteney, and Jen. That's it," Matt added. "Lisa Kudrow said it best. She said that she worked harder on these relationships than she did on her marriage."
Lisa says that Courteney who was offered the role of Rachel but turned it down to play perfectionist Monica Geller - helped the cast to bond from the beginning.
She wanted the show to be a success and was eager for her co-star's to give feedback on her performance.
"Courteney Cox was the best known of all of us, and she had done a guest star on Seinfeld. She said, Listen, I just did a Seinfeld, and they all help each other' And she said, You guys, feel free to tell me. If I could do anything funnier, I want to do it.' There's a code with actors. Actors don't give each other notes under any circumstances. So she was giving us permission to give her notes, and we all agreed that that would be great," she explained. "She was the one who set that tone and made it a real group that way. And I thought that was a real turning point."
NBC executive Karey Burke also reveals in the issue that Friends was originally to be called Six of One.
"Then [series creators] [Marta] Kauffman and [David] Crane came back with Friends, which we thought was such a snore. Some people thought the show was too Gen X, way too narrow," Karey explained.