Jerry Seinfeld ‘Really Believes’ ‘Friends’ Owes Success to ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Doesn’t Care’ About Backlash

Jerry Seinfeld had some harsh words to say about Friends at this year’s Netflix Is a Joke Festival.

“I think NBC was watching my show and went, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?'” the Seinfeld star, 72, said while performing at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 5, per The Hollywood Reporter. “And that was a pretty good idea. I think that kind of worked.”

Too well, perhaps.

“He has felt for years that Friends stole some of Seinfeld‘s thunder in the way it was initially conceived, cast and executed,” a source tells the National Enquirer, adding that it “genuinely bothers” the stand-up comedian that the ’90s sitcom is seen “as an equal” to Seinfeld, which also aired on Thursday nights on NBC.

“Jerry wants more credit for innovating and changing TV comedy than he gets,” says the source, “and he’s never liked being lumped in with Friends.”

Seinfeld, it seems, isn’t the only one.

Co-creator Larry David and costar Jason Alexander “privately share that opinion” too, Enquirer‘s source reveals, “but they’re way too diplomatic to air it out as bluntly as Jerry has.”

It’s just not their style, notes the source.

Seinfeld, though, “is an irritable guy and when something gets on his nerves, he has to say something,” the source explains, “and he doesn’t care if he gets hit with blowback for it.”

Adds the source: “He might look like a sore winner but the thing is, Jerry really believes, with his mind and soul, that Friends owes its entire successful run and creative DNA to Seinfeld.”