When Friends begins in season one, Charlie Taylor is already a fixture in Phoebe Buffay’s life. Twenty-five, effortlessly cool, and working as a fashion designer at Vogue, Charlie met Phoebe two years earlier in New York and quickly became her closest friend. By the time the pilot rolls around, Charlie is already a familiar face at Central Perk—sketchbook on the table, coffee in hand, listening to Phoebe’s songs and pretending they don’t make perfect sense.