David Schwimmer has shared how his daughter has made him reassess his relationship with Friends.
Schwimmer, 58, starred as goofy paleontologist Ross Gellar alongside actors CourtEney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry in the Emmy-winning sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.
Speaking to David Walliams and Matt Lucas on their podcast Making A Scene, Schwimmer revealed that, after the series wrapped in 2004, he never watched the show back and developed a negative response to hearing the show’s theme tune “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts.
“I never watched the show after we finished it. For me, it’s like, I did it, I’m moving on. I don’t go back,” he said.
“I’ll be really honest...there was a time for quite a while where just hearing the theme song would really… uhhhh,” he said, sighing. “I just had that reaction. I had just heard it so many times.”
“Any time you would go on a talk show or interview, that would be your intro song. I didn’t have the greatest response to it for a period of time.”
However, when Schwimmer’s daughter Cleo turned nine and began watching Friends on her own accord, Schwimmer said it shifted his outlook on the show.
“And then, at about aged nine, my kid discovered it and started watching it. And I’d be making breakfast or whatever and I’d hear my kid’s laughter,” he said. “My whole relationship to that song, and to the show, changed again.”
Schwimmer shares 11-year-old Cleo with his ex-wife Zoë Buckman, whom he met in 2007 and married three years later. The pair announced their separation in 2017.
Reflecting on the decade working on Friends, Schwimmer said it was an “incredible life changing chapter” but he was ready to move on.
“There was a part of me that was ready for the next chapter. It came to a natural end and maybe even overstated its welcome a little bit,” he said.
Speaking about his time working on the early episodes of the series, Schwimmer recalled the entire cast being taken to Vegas by the show’s director James Burrows and being warned that it would be the last time they could be in public with pure anonymity.
“It was true. It aired in the fall and it became an instant hit,” said Shwimmer.
Remembering the moment he realised Burrows was right, Schwimmer said he was catching a flight from Los Angeles airport when he was “accosted” by a group of female fans.
“I was at LAX and I was trying to catch a flight. I’m trying to find my flight and I hear a blood curdling scream. I was genuinely frightened. I thought someone was being stabbed. And a group of girls just come and accosted me.”
He continued: “They literally just screamed and grabbed me and they won’t let me go. And I had to extricate myself. And it was terrifying. It took me a while to get adjusted to fame.”
“I’m so glad it’s no longer the case. At the time, you had three cars following you everywhere you went, outside your house. You had no privacy ever.”
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