‘Friends’ theme song triggered David Schwimmer, says show overstayed welcome

David Schwimmer‘s emotions might’ve been stuck in second gear during a difficult period of the actor’s relationship with the height of his Friends-level success.

The star of the beloved NBC sitcom, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994-2004, revealed on a recent episode of Matt Lucas and David Walliams’ Making a Scene podcast that the show’s iconic theme song, The Rembrandts “I’ll Be There for You,” was at one point extremely difficult for him to hear.

In response to a question about his child discovering the show, the 58-year-old admitted that “there was a time for quite a while that just hearing the theme song” would trigger negative emotions.

“I just had that reaction, I just had heard it so many times,” Schwimmer continued. “Any time you’d go on a show or talk show or interview, that would be your intro song. I didn’t have the greatest response to it for a period of time.”

Schwimmer added that when his daughter Cleo, born in 2011, was around 9 years old, she discovered the show. ‘I’d be making breakfast or whatever, and I’d hear my kid’s laughter.'” This, he said, changed his “whole relationship to the song and the show” as a result.

He also noted that he “never watched the show after we finished it” because “I did it, I’m moving on” to relive the experience.

Still, Schwimmer added that “it was an incredible, life-changing chapter” for him as a person and an actor.

“At the same time, yeah, there was part of me at least that was ready for the next chapter. It felt like it was coming to a natural end, maybe even overstayed its welcome a bit, but we were having so much fun doing it. It was time. I was ready for what’s next,” he said of the show’s two-part series finale in 2004.

The iconic episodes, titled “The Last One,” had “everyone” in tears on set, Schwimmer recalled.

“It was such an amazing professional and creative, life-changing chapter and we loved each other, there was so much love, the crew, the cast, the writers, it was just an incredible collaborative experience,” he remembered. “Part of us knew we’d never experience anything like it again.”

Schwimmer and his costars, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, and the late Matthew Perry, remained close over the years and even teamed up on camera for Friends: The Reunion special in 2021, which aired two years before Perry died in 2023.

Since the conclusion of Friends, Schwimmer went on to explore his interest in directing and producing, including helming 10 episodes of Friends and two episodes of LeBlanc’s Joey spinoff series.

In addition to earning an Emmy nomination for his performance on Friends, Schwimmer scored an additional acting nomination for his role as Robert Kardashian in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story and another as a producer of Friends: The Reunion.