HBO Max’s Friends Reunion Special- The One Where They Get Back Together divulged all sorts of secrets- like crushes between co-stars- here’s looking at you David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston and feuds between co-stars- here’s looking at you David Schwimmer and…Marcel the Monkey.
Okay, so it wasn’t such a secret, Schwimmer did make it known back in 1995 that he was not a fan of Katie and Monkey, the capuchins who took turns playing Marcel.
David Schwimmer is in Trouble for Badmouthing His Friends Costar
“I hate the monkey,” Schwimmer complained back in the Friends heyday. “The trainers won’t let me bond with it. They’re really, really possessive. It’s like, ‘Land on your marks, do your job, don’t touch or bond with the monkey.’ It’s a bummer.”
During the reunion, however, Schwimmer sounded even saltier about his time working with the simian.
“Here is my problem,’ he began. “The monkey, obviously, was trained. It had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time. What inevitably began to happen was we would all have choreographed bits kind of timed out, and it would get messed up because the monkey didn’t do its job right. So, we would have to reset, we’d have to go again, because the monkey didn’t get it right.”
While this aroused laughs from audiences and for Jennifer Aniston to stand up for the capuchins, animal trainer Mike Morris, who handled the Marcel animal actors on the hit comedy was not amused. He believes that Schwimmer was both unfair to Katie and Monkey and that he was jealous of them both!
Morris thinks that Marcel was the one getting the laughs, not Schwimmer and, while the actor was initially “pretty friendly with the monkey”, he didn’t like being upstaged. “The monkey was getting a lot of laughs, and either it was throwing him off or [he was] getting a little jealous,” Morris suggested in regards to the falling out between the actors. “I don’t know. One of those two things.”
Morris did agree with Schwimmer’s 1995 sentiment, that the trainers wouldn’t let him “bond” with the monkey. “It is true that we prefer that actors don’t become too friendly with the monkey.”
Morris said: “An actor is a prop to the monkey and has to work with that prop. We don’t want them to become friends because then [monkeys] think, ‘Oh, it’s my friend, I don’t have to work… They just want to go hang out with their friend instead of doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s not out of spite or malice.”
While Katie, one of the Marcel acting animals, is still working, Monkey recently died of cancer. “Schwimmer was talking ill of the dead when he made those comments [on the reunion],” Morris said before admitting he has never watch the smash hit NBC comedy, nor the reunion “because of David Schwimmer.”
Morris didn’t mince words when saying, “I find it despicable for him to still be speaking ill of her. Him still talking ill about the monkey all these years later seems pretty childish to me… It was one season over 25 years ago, it’s time to let it go.”
The Friends Reunion is currently streaming on HBO Max.
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