Hardened nostalgists bagged a victory this week with the release of a long-teased Friends reunion special.
The special, aptly named Friends: The Reunion, takes a script-free approach as the original cast of the hit NBC comedy looks back on the decade they spent in front of the camera together. Tucked into the special is a question from roundtable host James Corden about “off-screen romances,” with the Late Late Show host noting they were all “young” and “hot” when the show kicked off in 1994.
Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel Green, quickly chimed in to turn the question over to David Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller. In the original series, Rachel and Ross’s on-again/off-again relationship serves as a central plot point for a number of episodes.
“Yeah, I mean, the first season I had a major crush on Jen,” Schwimmer said. “I think, at some point, we were both crushing hard on each other. But it was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary and we respected that.”
Aniston confirmed that this “crushing hard” feeling was mutual, while Matt LeBlanc—who played Joey Tribbiani—joked that Schwimmer’s claims of respecting relationship boundaries were “bullshit.”
Aniston also reflected on talking with Schwimmer early into the production about how it would be a “bummer” if their first kiss was on TV, adding that they both put the love they had for one another into their characters.
Elsewhere, the cast—which also includes Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, and Courteney Cox—took a stab at predicting where their characters would have ended up by now. Mostly, these predictions centered on marriage-focused outcomes, while LeBlanc joked that Joey (who actually did have a brief spinoff following Friends’ end) had likely opened a sandwich shop in Venice Beach, California.
The full reunion special, which also includes Lady Gaga putting her own spin on a staple from Phoebe Buffay’s catalog, is available now on HBO Max.
Below, revisit the digital red carpet event that preceded the special’s premiere on Wednesday night:
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