Sitcoms are, ultimately, not real. Still, it’s still easy to trick yourself into believing that the casts of your favorite sitcoms stay close even after the show ends, especially when the entire conceit of the sitcom rests on the characters being “friends.†So if you found yourself holding out hope that maybe the friends of Friends periodically get together to catch up and reminisce, Courteney Cox has some news for you: the titular friends of Friends have only hung out “like twice†since the show ended in 2004. Two times. In 16 years. This begs the question, are they even still friends??
Fortunately, the answer appears to be yes. While appearing on the web series Hiking with Kevin Nealon, Cox revealed that the whole crew had dinner at her home in October (probably where Jennifer Aniston posted that Instagram that almost broke the internet), how much fun they all had together, and how rare it is for all six of them to be in the same room at the same time. Describing her ideal Friends reunion, Cox had the following to say:
“The ideal for me — and we just actually recently did this, and it took forever. I don’t know how many years it was, maybe 15 years — and we finally all got together and had dinner. And when we get together, which is never … it just doesn’t happen very often, like twice since we ended the show — it’s just the most fun. We laugh so hard.â€
While it’s nice to know that no love is lost between the Friends, it’s pretty wild that they’ve only all been able to all get together twice in the past decade and a half. While some of them have clearly stayed close (looking at you Jen and Courteney) it’s interesting to speculate who is it that keeps the Friends from hanging out. Is David Schwimmer too deep in the Ryan Murphy-verse to check his email? Is Lisa Kudrow flakey like Phoebe and impossible to pin down? Is Matthew Perry even in the group text? Do they even HAVE a group text? In any case, all six Friends will be reunited on HBO Max in May to talk about the show and (hopefully) shed some light as to why they never hang out anymore. I’ll be there for you, cuz you’re there for me too twice every 15 years.