David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston as Ross Geller and Rachel Green in Friends. Photo / Warner Bros.
David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston as Ross Geller and Rachel Green in Friends. Photo / Warner Bros.
David Schwimmer - who starred as Ross Geller in the hit TV sitcom Friends - revealed upon reflection that he wished he embraced his fame more when he was younger while working at the height of his career.
During an exclusive interview with the New York Post forthe promotion of his new series, Goosebumps: The Vanishing, Schwimmer offered his younger self advice for being in the public eye, telling the outlet: “I would maybe say enjoy it more.”
“Enjoy the ride a little more,” Schwimmer said. “The thing about being a public figure at a young age is, for me, it was quite scary actually at that time of my life.”
He recalled the cast being followed by paparazzi and fans in cars wherever they went, highlighting the loss of privacy they all felt as they climbed the ranks in Hollywood.
Schwimmer said these events were “scary at the time to younger actors”, but in retrospect, he believes his younger self needed to “enjoy the whole thing more”.
Schwimmer, 58, began filming the cult comedy show in 1994 when he was 27, playing one of the show’s main characters for a decade before filming wrapped up in 2004 after 10 seasons.
The cast of hit 90s sitcom Friends - Courteney Cox (left), Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, the late Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer.
As he moved on to other projects following Friends, Schwimmer took on lead roles in the Madagascar film franchise and in American Crime Story, where he portrayed O.J. Simpson’s lawyer Robert Kardashian.
Preparing for the release of Goosebumps: The Vanishing - in which Schwimmer plays an ex-husband and father to twins Cece and Devin - he said younger actors need to be ready to “put in the work”.
“Don’t get lazy,” Schwimmer told the Post. “Luckily these young actors on this show - they’re just so naturally talented, great instincts. They did the work. They knew their stuff.”
Schwimmer joined the cast of Friends alongside five other aspiring actors, who went on to become household names amid the show’s success.
Working on the new season of Goosebumps with a lot of young actors, Schwimmer told GQ he notices a major difference in how Gen Z work on set with technology readily available to them, compared to when he was their age.
“The interesting thing was what happens off camera is that generation gap in that cut is called, everyone goes to their chairs or whatever, and you can, at any given point, you’ll see the six or seven young actors sitting in a row or next to each other all on their phones or shooting Instagram or TikTok,” he told the outlet.
“When I was their age on set, that was the time that you’d actually get to know people. You’d talk to other actors or in my case, I always wanted to direct, so I would use that time to talk to the crew, get to know what every person does on set and what their job is and what their background is.”
David Schwimmer said experiencing fame at a young age was "quite scary". Photo / Getty Images
Schwimmer isn’t the only Friends cast member who has spoken out about the perils of fame while starring in Friends.
LeBlanc - who played Joey in the hit sitcom - spoke with The Mirror in 2016 about how he dealt with burnout and bouts of depression following the end of the show.
A Friends spin-off called Joey ran for two seasons but was cancelled in 2006, and LeBlanc told the outlet that he “barely left the house” in the years following.
“I was burnt out. I wanted to not have a schedule, not be somewhere,” LeBlanc said. He added he was “in a position to do that,” given the actors were paid US$1 million ($1.8m) per episode towards the end of the show.
“My agent was bummed. Most actors call their agents and say, ‘What’s going on?‘. I’d call mine and say, ‘Please lose my number for a few years’. It was a very dark time. I almost had a nervous breakdown,” the actor, who is 57, told The Mirror.
The group of six came back together in 2021 for a reunion special hosted by James Corden, visiting the show’s iconic sets and meeting with celebrities and special guests from old episodes.
Speaking on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner on Me podcast, Kudrow said: “It [the reunion special] was so good.”
”We’d only had dinner, the six of us, once before since the show ended,“ she explained, revealing it coincided around the 10-year anniversary of the end of Friends.
“It was like we didn’t miss a beat. Just us at someone’s house and had dinner and, like, didn’t miss a beat,” Kudrow added.
