Seinfeld And Friends Are In The Same Universe Thanks To A Series Of Crossovers

When it comes to sitcoms about a group of young adult friends behaving badly in New York City in the 1990s, there are a few people might think of. There’s the incredible “Living Single,” which followed six young Black professionals living their best lives in a Brooklyn brownstone. Then there’s “Sex and the City,” HBO’s twist on the format with a whole lot more onscreen sex. But for many, the two big ones that come to mind are going to be the NBC hits “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” Both are shows about absolutely awful people who are nonetheless kind of lovable, and it turns out that because of a series of crossovers, they’re actually set in the same fictional universe. 

Both “Seinfeld” and “Friends” aired on NBC during the same era, but there wasn’t really much competition between the two shows because fans of one tended to also love the other. It would be easy to imagine how characters from each show would interact if they encountered one another, though unfortunately that never happened. What did happen, however, was that both “Seinfeld” and “Friends” had crossovers with a third NBC sitcom: “Mad About You.” 

“Mad About You” was a 1990s NBC sitcom about married couple Paul and Jamie Buchman (Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt). It crossed over with “Seinfeld” twice: once in a mid-series episode where Paul saw Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) walking down the street, and another, more involved instance early on in which Paul went back to visit his old bachelor pad and ran into Jerry’s ridiculous neighbor, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richardson). In the season 1 “Mad About You” episode “The Apartment,” Paul ends up running into Kramer, who is subletting Paul’s old place. Kramer is so, well, Kramer that Paul ends up letting Kramer keep the place, rent-free. Paul even asks about “that Jerry guy” and we get a fun meta-joke when Kramer tells Paul that Jerry is “writing a sitcom for NBC.” (Wait, if NBC is canon within “Seinfeld,” does that mean that it also exists in the same universe as “30 Rock”?)

Though “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld” both ran throughout most of the 1990s, with “Mad About You” running from 1992-1998 and “Seinfeld” from 1989-1998, they didn’t have any other full crossovers. Jerry’s friend George (Jason Alexander) does hold a grudge against his fiancée Susan (Heidi Swedberg) because she enjoys watching “Mad About You,” which is enough to make the brain swirl if you think about it too hard. That’s probably because the connection between “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld” was likely just a fun little bit that writers didn’t give too much thought to, unlike the connection between “Mad About You” and “Friends,” who shared actor Lisa Kudrow playing identical twins.

Lisa Kudrow had already appeared as mean, ditzy waitress Ursula on “Mad About You” when she got the role as sweet, ditzy Phoebe on “Friends,” and the creators behind “Friends” had an idea on how to not confuse NBC audiences. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “Friends” co-creator David Crane explained that because his husband was a writer on “Mad About You,” he was able to go petition for them to “share” Ursula, connecting Kudrow’s characters by making them semi-estranged identical twins. Phoebe appeared in almost every episode of “Friends” and Ursula appeared in 23 episodes of “Mad About You,” so there was definitely a tangible connection between the two shows even without actual crossovers (or the episodes of “Friends” where Kudrow played both Ursula and Phoebe through a little TV magic). 

The shows did crossover, however, with Ursula’s debut episode on “Friends,” in which Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) visited Paul and Jamie’s favorite restaurant, Riff’s, and mistook Ursula for their bestie Phoebe. Then, Jaime and a friend of hers stopped in the primary “Friends” hangout, Central Perk, and thought Phoebe was Ursula, complicated further by the fact that both twins are rather eccentric. Since both “Seinfeld” and “Friends” crossed over with “Mad About You,” that means that the “Seinfeld” gang and the friends from “Friends” were technically all hanging out in New York City around the same time. Just imagine if Joey had gotten to use his patented, “How you doin?” on Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Oh well, a fan can dream.