A closer look
Set decorators for the sitcom Friends found the iconic orange velvet couch abandoned deep inside the basement of a Warner Brothers prop storage facility before deciding to make it the centerpiece of the Central Perk coffee shop. The absolute most famous piece of television furniture from the nineteen-nineties, heavily featured in hundreds of episodes and countless promotional photos, was literally just dusty garbage that nobody else in the studio wanted. Millions of obsessed fans have spent decades romanticizing the aesthetic of that coffee house, completely unaware that the glamorous lives of six impossibly attractive New Yorkers revolved around a piece of seating that was probably harboring decades of prop-room mold and rat droppings. It perfectly encapsulates the reality of television production, where cultural landmarks are usually just a result of a set designer being too lazy to buy new upholstery
