During an appearance on the ‘Making a Scene’ podcast with British comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, Schwimmer spoke candidly about his reaction to ‘I’ll Be There for You’ by The Rembrandts.
“There was a time—quite a while actually—where just hearing the theme song would make me go… ugh,” he admitted. “I had just heard it so many times.”
The actor, who played Ross Geller for all 10 seasons of the hit sitcom, explained that the song became unavoidable. “Anytime you’d go on a talk show or do an interview, that was your intro music. So I didn’t have the greatest response to it for a while.”
The Moment He Realised His Life Had Changed
Schwimmer also reminisced about a moment early in his career when *Friends* director Jim Burrows predicted how fame would alter their lives.
“Jim took the cast to Vegas before the show even aired. At one point, while we were walking through a casino, he told us, ‘Remember this moment. It’s the last time you’ll be able to walk through a place like this with total anonymity.’”
It didn’t take long for Schwimmer to understand exactly what Burrows meant.
“I was at LAX trying to catch a flight—just me, no entourage. Suddenly, I heard this blood-curdling scream. I was genuinely scared. I thought someone was being attacked,” he recalled.
But the scream was for him. “A group of girls came running and just… grabbed me. They wouldn’t let go. It was terrifying.”
Schwimmer admitted that adjusting to that level of fame was difficult. “For a while, you’d have three cars following you everywhere. People staked outside your house. You had zero privacy.”
A New Appreciation for ‘Friends’
Over time, however, his feelings toward the show—and its theme song—shifted, especially when his child, around age nine, started watching *Friends*.
“I’d be making breakfast and hear my kid laughing at the show. That changed everything,” he said. “My relationship with the song and the series evolved.”
Despite the challenges of fame, Schwimmer now seems to have found a new appreciation for the sitcom that made him a household name.
