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David Schwimmer recently shared his feelings about F.R.I.E.N.D.S, the popular sitcom which catapulted him to fame over its 10 season run.
Schwimmer was speaking to Matt Lucas and David Walliams on their podcast, Making a Scene. The actor, who also lent his voice to the popular film franchise Madagascar, shared how his role in the sitcom overpowered his screen image.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S., a sitcom about the lives of six friends, ran from 1994 to 2004 with a total of 236 episodes. At its peak, the ultra-popular sitcom reached a viewership of 52.9 million, according to Screenrant.
Speaking about the immense popularity of the show, Schwimmer, during the podcast, said,
“I never watched the show after we finished it…for me, it's like, I did it, I'm moving on. I don't really go back and revisit.”
While Schwimmer recognised the importance of the show for his fans as well as in his career, the 51-year-old actor shared that he preferred to maintain a certain kind of distance. He said,
“Any time you’d go on a show or a talk show or an interview, that would be your intro song, so I just didn’t have the greatest response to it.”
As per a report by Looper, David Schwimmer found it hard to shed the image of Ross, the character he played on F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Ross is an easy-going twenty-something paleontologist whose love life is an important comic arc in the show. The sitcom also features Courtney Cox as Ross' sister, Matthew Perry as his best friend and Ross' frequent love interest, Jennifer Aniston’s character, Rachel. Other stars in the cast were Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc.
David Schwimmer’s reinvention as an actor
David Schwimmer also tried his hand at direction after the shooting of the last season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S ended in 2004. To date, he has directed two films, Run Fatboy Run and Trust, as per Reuters.
Apart from direction, Schwimmer’s role in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson did help him shed the Ross image. In the show, which aired in 2016, some twelve years after the last episode of the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. aired, Schwimmer played the character of a real-life personality, Robert Kardashian, who was O.J. Simpson’s lawyer.
Kardashian’s character was palpably different from Ross, the character with which Schwimmer has inevitably always been associated. According to a review by Slate, Schwimmer managed to channel the traits of F.R.I.E.N.D.S's Ross into the character of Kardashian, who is portrayed as a loyal friend who unwaveringly supports his friend.
David Schwimmer’s rekindled appreciation for F.R.I.E.N.D.S
Schwimmer, while speaking about his desire to maintain a distance from F.R.I.E.N.D.S, also revealed how, over the years, he could finally confront what was so special about the show.
According to Schwimmer, it was his daughter’s experience of the sitcom that made him relive the show in a truly special way. Schwimmer shared that it was a special feeling to encounter the show from the perspective of an audience member who happened to be his daughter, who had discovered the show at the age of nine. During the podcast, Schwimmer said,
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“I'd be making breakfast or whatever and I'd hear my kid’s laughter…my whole relationship to that song and to the show changed.”
Like David Schwimmer, the sitcom gained the renewed interest of viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report by Uproxx, the popular sitcom became the most-viewed comedy show on cable and broadcast TV in 2020, experiencing a 30 percent surge in viewership. The report mentions that the notable part of this record was the fact that the sitcom achieved the feat even after it stopped airing fresh episodes 17 years ago.
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