As a hangout sitcom centered on 20-somethings living in New York City, it was inevitable that FX’s Adults would be compared to Friends. But Adults creators Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold welcomed these comparisons.
“Ben and I grew up watching Friends. We love that show. We also love Living Single and Seinfeld and Broad City and Girls,” Shaw told Mashable as part of our Say More interview series. “We do not pretend to be the first people to do a 20-somethings-living-in-New-York comedy… But I think those kinds of comparisons are unbelievably flattering.”
On top of being inspired by Friends and other classic friend group comedies, Shaw and Kronengold actually got the opportunity to speak with Friends creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane before they began shooting Adults, and the veteran showrunners passed on some key wisdom.
“They were unbelievably generous with their time and just had a lot of insight into not just how you write and sustain a show like this, but also how you build an ensemble and create healthy cast patterns, and all of these things that they just did so well,” Shaw said.
The Friends creators helped Adults find a new name.
In addition to Kauffman and Crane’s advice on keeping an ensemble sitcom up and running, the pair also proved instrumental in changing Adults‘ name. When Kronengold and Shaw pitched the show in 2021, the working title was Snowflakes.
“People were talking about ‘special snowflakes’ a lot, and there was this idea of, ‘What if we sort of reclaim that?'” Shaw said. “Instead of the point being laughing laughing at these kids and being like, ‘They’re so sensitive,’ [we’d be] taking it back and being like, ‘Actually, they’re tougher than they seem.'”
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However, like much slang, the term “snowflake” began to fall out of fashion, and keeping it as a title threatened to undermine the show’s relevance and currency. Plus, Kauffman and Crane admitted they were skeptical of the title.
“When they say that, you better listen,” Kronengold said.
Settling on Adults as the new name also had its roots in the conversation with Kauffman and Crane. When Shaw and Kronengold were growing up watching Friends as kids, they saw the show as being about adults. However, Kauffman and Crane told Kronengold and Shaw that they had different perspective as showrunners, viewing it as “a study of young people,” Kronengold recalled.
That perspective switch reminded Kronengold and Shaw that while people from their characters’ (and their own) generation would be watching the show, there would also be members from other generations — hopefully both older and younger — tuning in.
“We really put ourselves back in the shoes of us watching these shows, feeling like it’s not a show about young people, but it’s a show about grown-ups. That’s where Adults, as generic a name as it is, came from and felt like it clicked into place,” Kronengold said.
“And [Adam] Sandler got to Grown Ups first,” Shaw joked.
For more on Adults from Shaw and Kronengold, check out Say More‘s full interview on YouTube.
How to watch: All episodes of Adults are now streaming on Hulu.
