'Friends' Fan Notices Incredible 'Home Alone' Connection While Rewatching Sitcom
The exterior shots of Monica and Chandler's house at the end of 'Friends' look familiar to 'Home Alone' fans for a reason.
Nearly 20 years after it premiered, a fan just found a major Easter egg in Friends Season 10. last weekend, Instagram user Scott Westwood pointed out that Chandler and Monica's house seemed to be the same house where the McAllister family lived in the movie Home Alone. Friends art director Daren Janes actually confirmed that this was no mistake in a comment on the viral post.
Westwood made a made a video analyzing similarities between the iconic set of Home Alone and the house that Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Monica (Courteney Cox) show to Joey (Matt LeBlanc) in Friends Season 10, Episode 14, "The One With Princess Consuela." He pointed out subtle similarities between the two houses, zooming in on fine details in shots from the sitcom and the 1990 movie. The video has over 14 million views and over half a million likes at the time of this writing. Once the post went viral, it caught the attention of Janes, who left a comment confirming Westwood's suspicions.
"This is hilarious. You caught me," he wrote. "I was the Art Director on FRIENDS and the house was a set. The actors walked in the front door, so we saw outside. We used the backing from a company called Pacific Studios which was made for Home Alone because it looked the best through the door & windows. Great eye my friend!!!!"
Friends takes place in New York City and is centered mostly around Monica's apartment in Manhattan – a beautiful home that is relatively large for the city, and is only affordable because she inherited her grandmother's rent-controlled lease. Most of the main characters live in the apartment at one point or another in the series, and the show fittingly ends with them moving out at last. Monica and Chandler buy a home in the suburbs outside the city where they can raise their adopted children.
Meanwhile, Home Alone is actually set in a suburb of Chicago, not New York. The house seems to pass for a standard family home in either city, although in reality Home Alone was closer to reality. The house is located in Winnetka, Illinois. Just this month, the New York Times published a piece on the idyllic house, noting that the McCallister family would have to be incredibly wealthy to afford it in today's economy. Its value was estimated at $665,000, which would be $305,000 in 1990.
This video goes to show how many subtle details can emerge when a show is binge-watched and rewatched as much as Friends is. You can stream Friends now on Max, and Home Alone on Hulu or Disney+.
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