Producers say 'Friends' will wrap up quietly

Cast, crew and executives will watch the finale together May 6.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
With "Friends"' series finale less than two weeks away, the producers don't care if any plot lines are leaked. (And so far, so good.)
"When we started thinking about how we'd protect the ending, we gave up," says co-executive producer Marta Kauffman, 47. "We knew we wouldn't be able to control it.
"By letting go and becoming a little less possessive, it kind of helped. People didn't feel as strong an urge to let out secrets, or perhaps they had more of a sense of good will."
Unlike HBO's "Sex and the City," which shot three series endings, "Friends" did only one.
The hourlong episode, set for May 6 on NBC, "has no bells and whistles," says co-e.p. David Crane, 47. "Our goal was that we wanted it to feel like the show, in every way."
Wrap party
Kauffman and Crane haven't seen the "Friends" cast since the Jan. 24 wrap party -- an intimate affair for 1,000 with Wolfgang Puck cooking, Sheryl Crowe performing, and the "Friends" sextet reading scenes from the 1994 pilot.
It will be a dramatically smaller scene for NBC's party May 6, when the cast and crew and executive suits gather to watch the swan song together.
Going cold turkey from the "Friends" folks "is the strangest experience, like withdrawal," says Crane. "It's very disconcerting."
To Kauffman, "it's a kind of emptiness. I compare it to what it must be like to get divorced from someone you still love."
The divorce isn't final yet. Kauffman and Crane are still editing scenes for the hourlong "Friends" retrospective to precede the finale.
Also, Crane is "helping out" with the pilot for "Joey," "Friends"' fall spinoff starring Matt LeBlanc as clueless Joey Tribbiani. After the pilot finishes shooting this week, all Crane plans to do "is wish them very well."
After that, Crane says, he'll take a year off before even thinking about his next project.
He'd like to do another series, "because I love the process -- sitting in a room with writers, working with actors. There's no medium more empowering for writers than television." The tricky part, he acknowledges, will be trying not to judge his next show against TV's most popular comedy.
"If I set out to try to top "Friends," I'm certain I'd be paralyzed. I'd be afraid I couldn't do it. Ultimately, I would spend the rest of my life disappointed."
Kauffman, Crane's writing partner since they were undergrads together at Brandeis, says her next project will not be a sitcom. Definitely.
"I have to reinvent myself a bit. I've done this for a long time, and I know I won't be able to top it."
I don't even want to try. I think I have to do something different."