Courteney Cox, ‘Friends’ cast are united: Seriously, NO reunion
Courteney Cox cast her vote for no “Friends” reunion in a sit-down Monday night with David Letterman.
So that makes it pretty much, oh, everyone in the cast of the classic sitcom who has come down on the “no freakin’ way” side of the reunion argument in recent years.
Maybe it’s time to stop asking the question, people?
At least Cox, who’s reportedly now living with musician boyfriend Johnny McDaid, pulled out a cute example of why “it’s not gonna happen”: It was the one with the dinner party.
“Let me tell you something: There’s six friends and I’ve been trying to put together a cast dinner for 10 years. It doesn’t happen,” the L.A.-based actress told Letterman. “I can get the girls to come, maybe Matthew Perry. Matt LeBlanc canceled last time right at the last minute, Schwimmer lives here [in New York City], so it’s just not gonna happen.”
If only we’d listened to Schwimmer back in 2011, when he told Hollyscoop, “I really like how the show ended. I really love how it ended. I think it was kind of a perfect ending and I can’t see any good reason to revisit it.”
Imagine the headlines that wouldn’t have been wasted ...
Matthew Perry dismissed the reunion idea early in 2013 in ABC News interview primarily about his much-publicized recovery from addiction. Of course, the headline focused on the possibility of a “Friends” reunion. His argument against it: Why ruin a good thing?
“It would be terrible to do something and have it not be good,” said the actor, who this year guested on Cox’s show “Cougar Town” after two years on his own show, “Go On.”
“It was so terrific. If we did a movie and it sucked, then it would, you know, blemish it.”
Reunion hoaxes in April 2013 and January of this year have done nothing to put the issue to bed, despite repeated dismissals from cast members and even the show’s creators.
In January of this year it was LeBlanc voting no and citing what first appeared to be a certain vanity as the reason.
“We are way too old to be showing what we look like from that to that,” he told OTRC while talking about his “Episodes,” his Showtime series, which will return in 2015. “No, we’re not doing one.”
But then he explained in more detail:
“ ‘Friends’ was about a finite period of time in your life, like after college but before your life really started. And that was the magic of it, it was that point, that time in your life. It’s magical, you had no obligation, no responsibility, you’re free.
“To see what they’re doing now? Who wants to see, like, Chandler pushing the stroller around or at his kid’s softball game? Everyone’s kind of drifted apart in real life, so what would the story be and where would it take place? I think it’s better for people to imagine their own future for those characters than to see a scripted version of it.”
Lisa Kudrow, who admitted to being spooked by the 2013 hoax, weighed in with Conan O’Brian on his show early last August.
“I don’t feel, ‘Enough already,’ ” the “Scandal” alum said, referring to seemingly unending questions about a possible reunion. “I honestly just feel really bad ... and that was actually something that was never going to happen. You’re disappointing them. And people got mad at me recently because I had said, no no, that’s never going to happen. They were angry, like I’m the one who shut it down.”
O’Brien laughed at the notion that she’d stopped something that was never going to exist in the first place.
“I stopped the fantasy that it was going to happen,” Kudrow said, before allowing that yes, folks were welcome to continue the fantasy that it was going to happen, if they so desired.
Jennifer Aniston even had a nightmare about a “Friends” reunion that didn’t include her. She shared the story with O’Brien just days after Kudrow appeared on the late-night show.
“I heard that [hoax] story, and oddly enough, I had a dream last night that that actually happened to me,” she said. “That I saw, I read it in the paper that the ‘Friends’ reunion was happening and I just didn’t get called. Isn’t that weird?”
“I think it created that anxiety of like, ‘What if that did happen?’ and they’re all cooking up a show, like a Thanksgiving episode, which I always thought were my favorites, and ‘What happened to Rachel?!’” Aniston said.
So now the questions and the hoaxes are messing with the actors’ heads? Yikes.
But there’s a cure for all of it, said fellow naysayers, “Friends” creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane. Talking to Entertainment Weekly last week, Crane had a super-simple suggestion for folks who still find themselves jonesing for show, which ended in 2004 after a 10-year run and has been in syndication for years.
“If anyone wants ‘Friends,’ turn on your TV!,” he said. “Amazingly, thank God, it’s there.”
ALSO:
Neil Patrick Harris: Hedwig, not me, cursed at fan during show
Julia Roberts ‘looking ahead’ after death of half-sister, she says
Lindsay Lohan reveals she suffered miscarriage during docu-series
Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs.
More to Read
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.