Hello Friends: Did you know there was an Indian remake of Friends that starred Cyrus Broacha, Maria Goretti and Nikhil Chinapa?

There is always word about; if Friends ever had a Hindi remake, how would it be? Well, guess what did you know that there was indeed a desi remake for the Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer starrer. Yes, the sitcom was titled Hello Friends and it aired on Zee Tv in 1999. While Friends: The Reunion aired today on Zee5; Hello Friends has also caught the eye of netizens.

It was five years after the original friends was aired that the remake made it to the Indian screens. Hello, Friends starred, Cyrus Broacha, Maria Goretti and Nikhil Chinapa in the lead roles, along with Simone Singh, Anil Dimri and Aparna Bannerjee. In some of the episodes, if you have managed to watch on YouTube, you can see the lines are pretty similar to the original. The only difference was the language.

Cyrus played Chandler, Simone was seen as Monica. Nikhil played a Ross with marriage on his mind. Just like Joey, Anil was seen as a struggling actor, Maria was seen a Phoebe and Aparna as Rachel. Central Perk was turned to Uncle Sam’s Cafe and unlike Gunther having a cold shoulder, Uncle Sam was quite friendly.

Nikhil had taken to his Instagram account earlier last year when he shared about the show, he wrote, ““Ross Chinapa” ?Not to be confused with the delectable Goan dish Ross Omelette, which I love. The only reason I didn’t officially change my name to Ross Chinapa was I figured I’d never get a girl to marry me with a name like that! ?‍♂️Also, 21 years? It took 21 years for the internet to dig this up? What were you busy with? ??In retrospect, I wouldn’t change this for the world. It was stupid, it was fun and in my opinion, it was so bad, it was brilliant (in a mildly psychotic way). ? I also loved working with the cast. Most people don’t know this but us VJs barely hung out together – we were constantly travelling to various cities. This was a fantastic opportunity to hang out, eat samosas and ruin our beautiful Hindi language (thanks Cyrus!) ?(sic)”

 

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As soon as Hello Friends was aired, it only lasted for 26 episodes due to the disappointing response and a 1.4 rating on IMDb.

Also Read: Friends: The Reunion: Fans ‘cry hard’ as they see Ross, Chandler, Joey, Rachel and Phoebe back at Monica’s apartment