After a long delay, Friends: The Reunion finally premiered on HBO Max on Thursday. As per details, the unscripted reunion episode was inspired by Episode 12 of Season 4 of the original show The One With the Embryos and was hosted by James Corden. A parade of celebrity fans also showed up including, Cara Delevingne, Cindy Crawford and Justin Bieber who modelled famous comedy outfits from the show on a catwalk, while Lady Gaga sang a duet of Smelly Cat with Lisa Kudrow.
Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai was also a guest on the show and briefly appeared to talk about the influence Friends had on her life.
“Friends brought friends together,” said Yousafzai sharing that one of her favourite moments from the show is “the routine” (i.e. when Monica and Ross recreate their dance routine from high school).
The reunion episode brought together the original cast of the show including Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc.
Meanwhile, the cast of the show made some interesting revelations during the reunion episode.
Schwimmer and Aniston – Ross and Rachel in the series – revealed for the first time that they had major crushes on each other in the early years of the series, but the first time they kissed was when their characters did so on-screen in 1995.
“I just remember saying one time to David, it’s gonna 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,” Aniston says in Friends: The Reunion.
“We just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel,” added the actor.
The passionate kiss which Aniston was referring to took place in the Central Perk coffee shop in Season 2’s The One Where Ross Finds Out. The scene is widely considered to be one of the highlights of the series, which came to an end in 2004 with the two characters finally getting back together.
Schwimmer and Aniston said the mutual attraction lasted for the first two years of the show, but they never got together as a couple off-screen because they were both in relationships or between relationships with other people.
In addition, it was also revealed that the audiences were the reason behind Monica and Chandler ending up together.
Schwimmer revealed that he hated filming with Marcel.
“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 would have to reset, we’d have to go again, because the monkey didn’t get it right,” said Schwimmer.
It also emerged that the hardest part of the show was to cast Aniston as Rachel as because of her role on Muddling Through, which was still on the air at the time.
Meanwhile, on the day of the reunion episode Aniston also shared a behind the screens throwback video much to fans delight.
Kudrow also shared a selfie with Schwimmer with the caption: “Tonight, that’s how long we waited to get together.”
The reunion episode was originally announced in February 2020. Friends aired for ten seasons between 1994 and 2004. It was also nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards and won the Outstanding Comedy Series award in 2002.
