‘Friends’ Cast Talks Off-Screen Crushes, On-Set Mishaps and More: 10 Revelations from the Reunion

All of the delightful behind-the-scenes tidbits revealed during HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion special.

Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) got back together for the highly-anticipated HBO Max special, Friends: The Reunion, streaming now. During the special, the cast — along with co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane, as well as executive producer Kevin Bright — shared a number of delightful behind-the-scenes tidbits from their time working on the NBC series, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004.

Aniston, 52, and Schwimmer, 54, revealed that it wasn’t just their characters, Rachel and Ross, who were attracted to each other. “I mean, the first season, I had a major crush on Jen. At some point, we were crushing hard on each other,” Schwimmer said in response to host James Corden’s question about off-screen romances between the cast. “But it was like two ships passing, because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary. We respected that.”

Aniston added, “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.’ Sure enough, first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channeled all of adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”

As the group walked around Stage 24, LeBlanc, 53, joked about Cox hiding her script in the bowl of fruit sitting on Monica’s kitchen table. “I saw it [one day on set] and I was like, ‘What is this?’ And she was like, ‘Mind your business,'” he recalled to the cast. “So before we shot that night, I erased it all and she got so mad at me!”

Kudrow, 57, had also noticed that there was “always a script” in the apartment’s kitchen sink, but she didn’t know why at the time. Turns out, it was Cox’s.

Crane said they had “to beg” and “beseech” Schwimmer to come on board. While Kauffman claimed that they sent the actor gift baskets, Crane had no recollection of that and thought they had just sent him a script. “We assured him that whatever his past experience was, this was going to be different. We promise,” Crane said. “And he came on board.”

Before the cast filmed each episode, they would all get together for a huddle. The one time they didn’t do it was when they shot the season 3 episode, “The One Where No One’s Ready,” during which LeBlanc accidentally injured himself while filming. The moment occurred when they filmed an argument between Joey and Chandler over a chair.

With the exception of Aniston, none of the stars enjoyed working with Ross’ monkey, Marcel. Schwimmer, in particular, was especially not a fan of the creature, who appeared during the first two seasons.

“I love animals. I love primates. I have nothing against animals, I’m an animal lover. However, here was my problem,” he said. “The monkey — obviously, it 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 all have choreographed bits kind of timed out, and it would get messed up because the monkey didn’t do its job right. So, we’d have to reset, we’d have to go again because the monkey didn’t get it right.”