Friends production designer explains why the walls of Monica's apartment were purple

Another 'Friends' mystery solved

Credit: Warner Bros. (The cast of 'Friends.' Credit: Warner Bros.)

Friends production designer John Shaffner has revealed why Monica's apartment walls were purple on the series.

The apartment was known for its distinct wall colour as well as its proximity to the gang's local coffee shop Central Perk.

According to an interview with Great Big Story, Shaffner revealed why he landed on purple as the backdrop for the group's home base.

He explained that when a set designer starts on a new series, smaller models of the sets are placed on white paper.

He said, "When we were presenting Friends, I presented a white model. And the producer looked at it and said, 'Well, now, what are we gonna do about colour?' and I said, 'I think we should paint the set purple.'"

"Everybody was really anxious about it, until I painted the little model purple," he added.

Producers were on-board with the purple colour and it essentially became its own character on Friends.

"Colour is really important in terms of establishing the show identity," Shaffner said. "When you switched to Friends, you saw that it was purple, and you stayed tuned."

Shaffner - who also worked on Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory - also revealed information about part of the Friends set: Monica's closet where she hoarded things.

"One of the responsibilities of a production designer is to look into the future, if you can," Shaffner explained. "We put a door all the way up [Monica's] hallway and we didn't really say where it went to."

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He wanted to "wait and see where the stories" took them.

Shaffner explained, "So all of a sudden, years into the show, we've never seen this door opened. They do an entire episode about: This was Monica's messy closet."

Aside from its colour, Monica's apartment on Friends has remained an iconic place in TV history for being an enormous, rent-controlled two bedroom apartment over 20 years later.