For Friends alum David Schwimmer, the iconic "I'll Be There for You" theme song we all know and love had worn out its welcome by the time the show ended its 10 season run in 2004.
"I'll Be There for You" by American pop rock duo the Rembrandts set up each episode of Friends during its entire decade-long domination of global TV. It became one of best-known and most-listened to songs in the world, and remains in the public consciousness today as Friends continues to pull in viewers on streaming platforms.
“I’ll be really honest, there was a time for quite a while that just hearing the theme song would really… ” he recently told Matt Lucas and David Walliams on their podcast Making a Scene. “I just had that reaction. I mean, I just had heard it so many times.”
Naturally with the show in syndication, he was bound to be exposed to it quite a bit over the years — but according to Schwimmer, the music was everywhere beyond those classic apartment walls. “Any time you’d go on a show or a talk show or an interview, that would be your intro song,” he added. “So I just didn’t have the greatest response to it.”
The legendary sitcom star, who is perhaps best known for his role as Ross Geller on the show, also revealed that he never returned to the series to even watch an episode or two following its end. That is, until his daughter Cleo “discovered it around age nine or something.”
“For me, it’s like, I did it, I’m moving on. I don’t really go back and revisit,” he said, before adding about his change of heart. “I’d be making breakfast or whatever and I’d hear my kid’s laughter. My whole relationship to that song and to the show changed.”
To be fair, we probably wouldn’t ever want to hear that song again either if we were him. Friends aired its finale episode on May 6, 2004 after 10 years on NBC. A reunion special Friends: The Reunion aired in 2021 on HBO. The entire series and the special are available to stream now on MAX.
Photo by Robert Isenberg/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
