The Friends reunion is only a couple days away from airing on HBO Max, and one of the special guests, Thomas Lennon (Joey’s identical hand twin), shared a taste of what fans can expect on May 27. Friends is a popular sitcom, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC and starred Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing), and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller). The show follows six friends as they navigate the ups and downs of life together in New York City. Friends won six Primetime Emmys during its decade-long run, and its popularity hasn’t waned a bit since the show’s finale 17 years ago.
A new generation has fallen in love with the series after discovering reruns on cable networks and streaming services. Friends fans old and new have been demanding a reunion with all six actors for years now. In 2014, Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a brief segment in a replica of Monica’s apartment. Two years later, the cast reunited to celebrate the career of director Jim Burrows; however, Perry was unable to attend in person. The stars’ schedules have finally aligned for this HBO Max special, which was supposed to air last year, but the Covid-19 pandemic delayed production.
In an interview with E! News, Lennon revealed that during the reunion special, he and a few other people hid behind a curtain and exposed just their hands. “They were trying to see if Matthew (LeBlanc) could pick his hand twin just by the actual hands,” Lennon said. Lennon then popped his head out from behind the curtain to surprise the cast.
In “The One in Vegas: Part 2,” Joey realizes that his blackjack dealer (Lennon) has hands that look exactly like his own. This leads Joey to believe that they could become millionaires because he thinks Las Vegas tourists would pay a lot of money to see two sets of identical hands. Joey even wrote a song to the melody of “This Land Is Your Land” in preparation of their Vegas act. An excerpt from Lennon’s interview about his involvement in Friends can be viewed below:
At the time, Friends was already the most popular show in the world, and so it was very intense to go in and be on that set. It was a little bit like going to somebody else’s Thanksgiving and they all know each other, and there’s a lot going on, and there’s drama you don’t know about. It was certainly like a little intense to be there, and the reason I remember it is because no matter how many movies I’ve been in or written or how many things I’ve done, the one thing that people always come up to me, and they’re like, ‘Joey’s hand twin! This hand is your hand!’ I’ve been in like 100 other movies but no one cares. Just the Friends stuff.
Lennon said that filming the Friends reunion was a “really surreal experience,” and it will likely be surreal for people to watch as well. Seeing the cast together again in the apartments and at Central Perk is definitely going to stir up emotions for true fans.
It was a wise decision to make this reunion an unscripted special instead of a scripted reboot, because it eliminates the possibility of disappointing fans with storylines they might have disagreed with. Friends worked well because it occurred at a specific time in the characters’ lives, which is a sentiment that co-creator, Marta Kauffman, expressed in 2016 at the Austin Film Festival. If a scripted reboot were to happen, it would be almost impossible to recreate the magic of the original series, and the reboot would likely suffer the same fate as the Friends spin-off, titled Joey. Instead of trying to recreate the magic of Friends for an entirely new series, the reunion special just needs to pay homage to the show in a meaningful way, and people will love it.
Source: E! News
Originally from https://screenrant.com/friends-reunion-thomas-lennon-joey-hand-twin-appearance/