They could count on their youth, talent and enthusiasm. That was a given. The one thing that the cast of Adults — an FX comedy often described as a Gen-Z Friends — couldn’t guarantee up front was chemistry.
But hanging out together for a month in Toronto before shooting began created a strong chosen family bond. It let the cast blur the lines between their characters — five twentysomething New Yorkers trying to be functioning adults — and their actual selves: two Canadians, one Australian, a Virginian and an Angeleno.
As on the eight-episode series, they congregated at Samir’s place. "Everybody started coming to my apartment every night," says Malik Elassal, who plays the sweet but anxiety-ridden fixer in whose absentee parents’ house they all live on the show. "We just told each other everything," he says. "It was like, let’s double-Dutch into each other’s lives. We’re just lucky that we all really liked each other."
"Liked" is an understatement.
"We bonded so much that if the show hadn’t been picked up, FX would have had to pay for our therapy," says Owen Thiele, who plays popular people-pleaser Anton. "We were instant best friends. We became obsessed with each other."
"There is a little bit of magic in our dynamic," says Lucy Freyer, who plays Billie, Samir’s childhood bestie. "It just feels like this show is a very special thing to be a part of."
Adults, the cast agrees, nails what it’s like to be their age in 2025.
"This is like an archetypal Gen-Z friend group," says Amita Rao, who plays the always confident, often outrageous Issa. "It’s exactly how my friends and I talk."
This means, of course, that Adults — which was created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, married writers on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — is not for the faint of heart. But foul language is the least of it. In an early episode, for instance, Issa gives a self-loving subway pervert a taste of his own medicine. It wasn’t an easy shoot. "I don’t know if you’ve ever masturbated for that long, but it was pretty exhausting," Rao says. She was faking it, but still.
You would never have seen someone do that on Friends — okay, maybe Phoebe — but the association with that long-running show is both inevitable and welcome.
"I'll take that comparison any day of the week," says Jack Innanen, who plays Issa's puppy-ish boyfriend, Paul Baker. "Friends is such a perfect time capsule of what friendship meant to its era. I hope Adults can do the same."
Adults is executive-produced by Ben Kronengold, Rebecca Shaw, Nick Kroll, Stefani Robinson, Sarah Naftalis and Jonathan Krisel, along with Alicia Van Couvering under Kroll's Good At Business banner. The series is produced by FX Productions.
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #8, 2025, under the title "Friends Like These."
