The pandemic may have delayed the long-awaited Friends reunion, but it's still happening.
The reunion was supposed to be filmed back in the spring, so that it could debut along with HBO Max's launch in May. When the pandemic hit, the production had to be put on hold.
David Schwimmer and Intelligence costar and creator Nick Mohammed joined Hoda Kotb on the Today show Wednesday morning, and she asked Schwimmer to set the record straight on the status of the special.
"There's definitely going to be a Friends reunion," he said. "We have a lot of the creative aspects of the show kind of worked out. It's unscripted, but there are going to be some surprise funny bits. The real question is, ‘When?' We're still trying to figure that out because we want to do it when it's safe to do so for everyone."
The reunion is set to film on the Warner Brothers studio lot, on the stage that Friends originally called home. Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry are all confirmed to participate, alongside show creators Marta Kauffman, Kevin Bright, and David Crane.
The special will likely feature some discussion about whether Ross and Rachel were on a break, but if you can't wait for that (and haven't been satisfied yet), Kotb also got the scoop from both Ross and the Copy Girl (Angela Featherstone), with whom Ross slept during that (very, very brief) break.
"All I know is he was definitely on a break when he was with me," Featherstone said in a video that Kotb played for Schwimmer, alongside an invitation for Ross to come to her coffee shop for some free coffee.
Schwimmer confirms this answer.
"There's no question we were on a break," he said.
(We would like to argue that yes, they were on a break, but they did not stop to clarify whether a "break" meant it was OK to sleep with the first person they could find, but this is a discussion for another time.)
Schwimmer's character in Intelligence is quite the leap from Ross, but he was actually drawn to the role because he's such a fan of Mohammed, and loved the concept of the show, which is about an American NSA agent who gets sent to the UK to help deal with cybercrime.
"I love the idea of a traditional kind of workplace ensemble comedy set in the high stakes world of national security and cyberterrorism," he said. "And also, I thought this guy was a real hoot to play."
Intelligence is now streaming on Peacock.
E!, Peacock, and NBC are all part of the NBCUniversal family.