So no one told us it was going to be this way...but as long as we get a Friends reunion sometime, it's a moo point.
Last February, following months of rumors, HBO Max announced that Friends cast members Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow had signed on to take part in an unscripted reunion special for the hit sitcom, which first aired between 1994 and 2004. However, after the start of the coronavirus pandemic last March, production of the anticipated project got delayed, and in November, Perry said the reunion was postponed to March 2021.
On an episode of Rob Lowe's podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe, released on Thursday, Jan. 14, Kudrow gave an update on the production plans.
"We're going to shoot that in the spring," she said. "Early spring."
The actress added, "I pre-shot something for it already. So we're definitely doing it because I already shot a little something."
Kudrow also offered a few details about the anticipated reunion, reiterating, "It's not a reboot."
"It's not like a scripted thing," Kudrow continued. We're not portraying our characters. It's us getting together, which doesn't happen a lot and has never happened in front of other people since 2004, when we stopped [filming Friends]."
Kudrow and Aniston had made similar comments about the nature of the HBO Max reunion project in an "Actors on Actors" interview for Variety last June.
Many members of the Friends cast have had mini reunions over the years. However, the six rarely reunited all together since the show ended its run on NBC.
"The ideal for me—and we just actually recently did this, and it took forever. I don't know how many years it was, maybe 15 years—and we finally all got together and had dinner," Cox said on Kevin Nealon's web series Hiking With Kevin in 2020. "And when we get together, which is never—it only happened...it just doesn't happen very often, like twice since we ended the show—it's just the most fun. We laugh so hard."
Cox also talked about the Friends reunion project for HBO Max, saying, "So the exciting thing is that we're all going to get together for the first time, in a room, and actually talk about the show...We're going to have the best time. It's going to be great."
Last July, Schwimmer joked to E! News, regarding the reunion, "I guess what I'm honestly most looking forward to is just being in the room with those other five actors. It's five, right?"
He added, "But being on the actual sound stage on the actual set for the first time in 10 years, the set that we shot on for 10 years, that to me is going to be a really meaningful experience."