It’s quite hard to accept that Friends: The Reunion just ended in a blink of an eye. But, fortunately, we, the fans, can always rewatch the glorious ten seasons of the iconic sitcom. The main casts – Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer have been flooding their Instagram with behind-the-scenes pictures from the Reunion show.
When it comes to Ross Geller (David Schwimmer)’s comments on Marcel (Ross’s pet monkey on the show), the monkey trainer didn’t take it well. After the actor took a dig on Marcel, the trainer slammed Schwimmer for his ‘awful’ comments.
Mike Morris, who oversaw the two monkeys that played Marcel during eight Friends episodes, had an interview with The Sun on 5th July 2021. He assumed that David was “jealous” of the stardom the monkey was getting on the show. He further explained that – “For the first few episodes, David was totally happy with the monkeys. But he seemed to be a little annoyed by them when people would laugh at Marcel, and not at Ross.”
The trainer took a great offense at David’s candid comments on the little fellas. He stated that Schwimmer made it very clear that he was not fond of his four-legged co-actors – “working for a five-camera show is not easy and when you have an actor who doesn’t help that much- it gets even harder.”
While Marcel and Ross’s onscreen bromance was just adorable, it seems David had a hard time working with the monkeys offscreen. When asked about the one -thing-that-you-didn’t-like-about-the-show, David mentioned Marcel – ” I love animals, I have nothing against them, however, you know here is my problem. The monkey was obviously trained well, and had to do the thing at the right time.” David said on the HBO Max special, – ” It was like we all had choreographed, bits were timed out, but the scene would get messed up because the monkey failed to do its job. So, we would have to reset everything, we would have to go again because the monkey didn’t get it right.” David also added – “So, it kept happening over and over when we were about to do something funny but the monkey didn’t do its part right and we had to start the scene all over again.”
On other hand, Courtney shared – “The monkey scared me” and Jennifer recalled – “I loved the monkey”. And LeBlanc blurred out – “David was not a fan.”
On the defense of the monkeys, the trainer said that – “they didn’t like working with David too. He is not an actor who can improvise, when people laughed at the monkey, it might have thrown him off.”
Morris applauded the other cast members for being “nice” with the monkey. – “Matt LeBlanc was great, he and Jennifer Aniston had a few scenes with the monkey and they did a great job.” LeBlanc said on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show – ” Though Schwimmer was not so much a fan of it, he worked with it the most.”
However, Morris had a bit of advice for David Schwimmer. – ” The season is 25 years old. He needs to let it go. He sounded like he has still got the monkey on his shoulder.”
