This Sex And The City Star Almost Played Monica On Friends
This is wild.
It’s always great to find out an iconic pop culture character could have been played by someone else. On Dec. 16, Kristin Davis revealed on The Late Late Show with James Corden that she had originally auditioned for the role of Monica Geller on Friends. The role famously went to Courteney Cox, but Davis explained she was one of the thousands of young actresses who read for the part. Although Davis went on to play the equally iconic character of Charlotte York on HBO’s Sex and The City a few years after the premiere of Friends, it’s wild to think that Kristin Davis almost played Monica Geller on Friends.
In the interview, Corden asked Davis if the rumors that she’d come close to playing Monica were true. She quickly responded with, “I don’t think we can say quite close. I think I was about one of like 8,000 young ladies who read for Monica.”
Davis explained she and Cox were friends from yoga class, and after Cox filmed the pilot for Friends, she asked Davis and other women from the yoga class to go car shopping with her. “We used to hang out. The rest of us were unemployed actresses... waitresses types and we would hang out after class and one day Courteney was like ‘Hey guys, do you want to come car shopping with me?’” Davis said she and the rest of the group were shocked. “And Courteney said, ‘I did this pilot and I’m feeling very good about it. I think I’m going to buy a Porsche,’ and we were like, ‘Wow, is she for real?’”
Of course, the pilot Cox was referring to was Friends. Davis finished by saying, “And it did go very well.”
Despite not getting the part of Monica Geller, Davis did book a guest appearance on Season 7 of Friends on an episode called “The One With Ross's Library Book.” Davis played a woman named Erin who has a one-night stand with Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc).
In a 2019 interview with the Today Show, Davis spoke about her time as a guest star on the hit show and said she was nervous while filming due to wanting to fit into the specific world of Friends. “It was a very different kind of show than I had ever been around because it was a sitcom,” Davis said. “Sex and the City was a single camera, very different shot, on location in New York. It was so different and so interesting. I felt like a student just watching how they worked and how they worked with their writers.”
Of course, not all was lost for Davis after losing out on playing Monica. Just four years after the premiere of Friends, Davis popped on-screen as everyone's favorite brunette Charlotte York on Sex and The City in 1998. And it’s fair to say, that went very well, too.
So well, in fact, that the show remains one of HBO’s most notable television series, produced two films, and is currently making headlines with its And Just Like That reboot. It looks like New York City will always be big enough for both Monica Geller and Charlotte York.
