The one with the fame.
David Schwimmer’s stint as Ross Geller on “Friends” launched his career and earned him a staggering $1 million an episode in its final seasons. But, there is one aspect of the Central Perk experience he would change looking back.
“Advice I’d give my younger self … I would maybe say enjoy it more,” he exclusively told The Post while promoting his new series, “Goosebumps: The Vanishing.”
“Enjoy the ride a little more. The thing about being a public figure at a young age is, for me, it was quite scary actually at that time of my life,” he explained. “All of us were kind of constantly followed by three or four cars at a time. Anywhere we went, you had no privacy anymore. And that to me, my response to it, I would just give my advice to my younger self to also just enjoy the whole thing more. Because that was scary at the time to younger actors.”
Schwimmer, now 58, was just 27 when he started filming the beloved NBC comedy, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004. The New York-based series, which was shot at Warner Bros. Studios lot in LA, also starred Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry, who died at age 54 from the acute effects of ketamine on Oct. 28, 2023.
In 2016, Schwimmer recalled how becoming a household name nearly overnight also affected his personal life.
“It was pretty jarring and it messed with my relationship to other people in a way that took years, I think, for me to kind of adjust to and become comfortable with,” he told the Hollywood Reporter at the time. “As an actor, the way I was trained, my job was to observe life and to observe other people, and so I used to walk around with my head up, and really engaged and watching people. The effect of celebrity was the absolute opposite: It made me want to hide under a baseball cap, not be seen. And I realized after a while that I was no longer watching people; I was trying to hide. So I was trying to figure out: How do I be an actor in this new world, in this new situation? How do I do my job? So that was tricky.”
The cast reunited in honor of the show’s 20th anniversary for an HBO Max special in 2021. Since saying goodbye to “Friends,” Schwimmer notably portrayed Robert Kardashian in Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story” and can now be seen in the series “Goosebumps: The Vanishing.”
Season 2 premiered on Disney+ and Hulu on Jan. 10, and shows Schwimmer as a recently divorced dad, Anthony Brewer, to fraternal twins Devin and Cece. Advice to his young cast would be to “put in the work.”
“Don’t get lazy,” he told The Post.
“Luckily these young actors on this show — they’re just so naturally talented, great instincts. They did the work. They knew their stuff. So I didn’t really have to give them much advice,” he went on. “I would say if they start to become really, really famous or whatever, if they wanted advice, I would talk to them then. But mostly I would just say focus on the work. Feel good about what you do.”
Schwimmer, who has also appeared in “Six Days Seven Nights,” “Band of Brothers” and voiced Melman in “Madagascar,” noted joining “Goosebumps: The Vanishing” was “an opportunity to challenge” himself “and to grow as an actor and try something new.”
“I would say the thing that is most impelling to me is when I’m presented with something that I’ve never done before. And this was one of those things. I’ve never been able to be in an action comedy or horror series. And I’m a genuine fan of the genre and I love horror films. I’ve always wanted to be in one. I’d still love to be in one,” he said.
For Schwimmer, how he chooses roles has changed since starting out the industry.
“This chapter of my life, I’m so enjoying being a dad that in real life that it takes a lot for me to want to leave home and be away from my kid for a month or four months at a time,” he explained. “So I was very lucky, doubly lucky that this happened to shoot in New York where I live, so I didn’t have to leave home. I get to be in my own bed and see my kid every day. And so it was great.”
The actor welcomed daughter Cleo in 2011 with ex-wife Cleo Buckman.
While home, Schwimmer read “Say Out of the Basement,” which his character Anthony is based on, in order to prepare for the series.
“I would have loved to talk to him,” he said of not speaking with “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine before production. “It was really fun to read that and obviously to read the script and to meet with the writers and hear where the whole journey of these eight episodes goes. I was just really excited by being a part of this incredible world that is Goosebumps. So many people just love the stories and love the books.”
All eight episodes of “Goosebumps: The Vanishing” are now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
