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10 things we learned from the 'Friends' reunion special

The one where they all get back together.
by Amber Dowling
May 27, 2021 10:18 a.m. EST
Crave Crave

Call it the one that aired for 10 years, pumped out 236 episodes, ran in over 220 territories and was TV’s No. 1 comedy for six straight seasons (averaging 25 million weekly viewers). Knowing all that, could there BE a TV event any more anticipated than the Friends reunion?

Finally, after numerous delays, the two-hour special dropped May 27 on Crave and it’s a doozy. From trips down memory lane, to outtakes, to shocking revelations, there were plenty of tears… and a ton of laughter. 

Not only did the special mark the second time the entire cast—Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer—were in the same room together since the show wrapped in 2004, but it’s also the first time they were all on-set together since that monumental finale. 

Here are all the major things we learned from the heartfelt reunion. 

Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer were almost a thing

Did you hear the one about how Ross and Rachel actually had a thing for each other in real life? No wonder their onscreen chemistry was off-the-charts. During the sit-down interview portion of the reunion, host James Corden asked the cast how it was that they never hooked up with each other during all that time. 

Turns out, Aniston and Schwimmer were totally crushing on each other in the first season, but the timing just never worked out since one of them was always in a relationship. And so they never crossed that boundary. 

“Honestly, I remember saying one time to David, it’s going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I actually kiss is going to be on national television,” Aniston said. “Sure enough, first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channelled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”

Oh and as for the rest of the cast? They totally knew! The actors would cuddle on the couch and fall asleep together on set, totally tipping everyone off.

“Is this blowing anyone else’s mind?” Corden screamed at one point. 

Well yes, James. Yes it freaking is. 

Matthew Perry opens up about addiction

Ahead of the reunion show, fans expected Perry to potentially open up about his struggles with addiction, especially after preview clips showed him slurring his speech. As it turns out, the speech thing was because of some dental surgery, however, the actor did open up about how hard doing the show was for him at times.

“I felt like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh,” he said seriously while the cast was discussing filming in front of an audience. “It’s not healthy for sure. But I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get, I would freak out… I felt like that every single night.”

David Schwimmer totally hated that monkey

Hands up if you were just a little bit devastated when Ross’s monkey, Marcel, exited the show. Well as it turns out, Schwimmer was happy for his furry friend to depart. In fact, his exit couldn’t come quickly enough.

“I love animals. I love primates. I am an animal lover,” Schwimmer explained. “The monkey obviously was trained and it had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time. But what inevitably began to happen was we would have choreographed bits kind of timed out and it would get messed up because the monkey didn’t do its job right,” he continued.

“So we’d have to reset, we’d have to go again because the monkey didn’t get it right. So this kept happening over and over where were about to do something really funny, but the monkey didn’t hit its mark so we would have to start again.”

As his co-stars made fun of Schwimmer for how angry he was, the actor vehemently defended himself, saying they didn’t have to go through having a monkey eating live grubs on their shoulders.

“The monkey would be sitting on my shoulder, take some grubs, like break them in half, these squirming live grubs, eat it, and then he’d just [wipe his hands on me.],” he continued. “I’d have monkey, grubby hands all over and it just wasn’t … it was time for Marcel to f--- off.” 

Matt LeBlanc seriously hurt himself on set

One of many fans favourite episodes is “The One Where No One’s Ready.” The Season 3 episode was the series’ 50th installment, and it was created as a "bottleneck episode"—a.k.a. one filmed on pre-existing sets specifically to save money on the season’s production budget. 

If you’ll recall, the episode centered on the characters “getting ready” for Ross’s big event, but of course, no one is actually ready. While there were intersecting storylines throughout the episode, there was one scene where Joey and Chandler fought over the comfy chair.

At one point, it was scripted that Joey would run and jump onto the chair when Chandler returned to the room. After three takes, they decided to do it again, only this time LeBlanc tripped and his arm came right out of the socket. Emergency workers showed up, he was taken to the hospital, and production had to stop because there was no way to continue the scene. The incident meant that one of the cheapest episodes to produce wound up costing them the most money. 

Later, the writers explained Joey’s new arm sling as an injury from the character jumping on his bed and falling off. 

The cast had a ritual before every show

In a sweet moment, the cast recalled how they would huddle together before filming every single episode in front of the live studio audience. The one time they didn’t—because they were running behind and didn’t want to make people wait any longer—was the same night that LeBlanc popped his arm out of its socket.

You can bet that every single time they filmed after that, LeBlanc made sure they always followed the ritual. He didn’t want any other painful accidents to go down.

Casting this thing was a heck of a time

As part of the lookback, producers recalled trying to find the perfect cast for their series. They had seen Schwimmer at a previous audition and kind of had him in mind for Ross, but he had to be lured in from theatre because at that point he’d quit TV.

Lisa Kudrow was the next actor to be cast, and she got the part because the producers liked what she’d done with the Ursula character on Mad About You (of course, Ursula wound up becoming Phoebe’s twin sister).

LeBlanc, who was the least recognized name of the bunch at the time, came next. He jumped through hoops to get the part, and even went to his final audition with a chunk of his nose missing after he hurt himself drinking with a buddy the night before.

Then Cox, whom the writers had originally considered for Rachel, followed.

Last but not least were Perry and Aniston, who were both attached to other projects at the time. But as it turns out, the casting gods were in everyone’s favour, and in the end, they both got out of their other shows so that they could rise to fame as Chandler and Rachel. Could that BE any cooler?

Chandler and Monica weren’t originally end game

One of the things the producers and writers learned from doing Friends for so long was to listen to the audience. And when Monica and Chandler hooked up in the Season 4 finale, they were shocked at how into the pairing the audience was. Fans loved it so much that they reconsidered the entire storyline.

You see, originally the pair were going to hook up, and maybe the writers would turn that into some awkward moments in Season 5. But then they decided to keep the secret relationship going for a while, and eventually, Monica and Chandler were end game after all.

Sometimes you’ve just got to give the audience what it wants… 

There will never be another actual episode of Friends (or a movie)

Friends was created about a group of people during that time of life when your friends are your family. So when the characters started having actual families, the writers knew it was time to move on. In order to do that, they wanted to create happy endings for each of the characters.

Fast forward to 17 years later, and those happy endings are the reason why the writers will never produce another episode of the series, let alone a movie or some other project that would undo what they so carefully crafted in the first place.

“They ended the show very nicely. Everyone’s lives are very nice and they would have to unravel all those good things in order for there to be stories,” Kudrow explained. “I don’t want anyone’s happy ending to be unraveled.”

Filming that happy ending was still tough

Everyone got a happy ending in the finale, sure. But that didn’t make it easy to film. In the special, there’s a clip of Aniston and Schwimmer hugging long after their final scene together cut, and in the show’s very last scene the entire cast hugged each other and wiped back tears during a private moment in the hallway before coming back and greeting the audience.

The hardest thing though was seeing their sets get torn down as soon as they wrapped, since another pilot was coming in to shoot, like, the next day.

So the cast and crew dealt with it the way anyone would, and they ordered pizza and beer and had a big old party on the set. They signed the flats too, which still stand there today. 

Don’t hold your breath for another reunion

There were so many great moments in the two-hour special, it would be impossible for fans to walk away not wanting more. However, sadly, they’ll have to. Cox had her own moment with her co-stars in her character’s old apartment where she flat out said this is the last time these six will ever be together in that kind of capacity again.  

“This will be the last time that we’re ever asked about the show as a group... like, we’re not going to do this again in 15 more years,” she said. I’ll tell you one thing, we are not waiting so long to have a dinner.”

While fans can only hope their invite is in the mail, Perry summed it up best.

“The best way I can describe it is after the show was over, at a party or at any kind of social gathering, if one of us bumped into each other that was it, that was the end of the night,” he said.

“You just sat with the person all night long and that was it. You apologized to the people you were with, but they had to understand you had met somebody special to you and you were going to talk to that person for the rest of the night. That’s the way it worked,” he continued.

“It’s certainly the way it worked with all us. It’s just the way it is. I’m going to cry now.”

He and us both.

Break out the tissues and cue up Friends: The Reunion, steaming now on Crave. 

BEFORE YOU GO: Rachel Bilson apologizes to former ‘The O.C.’ co-star

[video_embed id='2209462']BEFORE YOU GO: Rachel Bilson apologizes to former ‘The O.C.’ co-star [/video_embed]

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