In a magical world where the characters on Friends still exist, Lisa Kudrow knows just how her beloved Phoebe Buffay would be handling the coronavirus lockdown. She and her character’s husband Mike Hannigan would have a bunch of kids and she’d be forcing them to make art projects all day long while in quarantine. The 56-year-old actress told the UK’s The Sunday Times in a new interview that “I feel like if they’d had kids she would be militaristic about creating art. So their place would be overrun with huge, outlandish projects.”
When Friends came to a close in 2004, Phoebe and Mike were talking about starting a family after getting broody seeing their pals become parents. Ross and Rachel already had daughter Emma, and when the series ended, Monica and Chandler finally got to become a mom and dad via the adoption of newborn twins Jack and Erica. While everyone cooed over the babies, Mike played by Paul Rudd, 51 — told Phoebe, “I want one,” to which she joked, “Oh yeah? Tell me which one and I’ll slip it in my coat,” referring to the twins. “Seriously, I mean, you want to make one of those?” Mike asked Phoebe who excitedly responded, “One? How about a whole bunch?
Lisa and the rest of the core six cast members Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer were supposed to get together this month — May 2020 — for a highly anticipated reunion special that will air on HBO Max. But because of the coronavirus lockdown and social distancing that has shut down nearly all Hollywood productions, the taping has been delayed until at least Nov. 2020. The production will eventually take place on Stage 24 on the Warner Brother’s lot in Burbank, CA, where the show filmed it’s 10 seasons.
Friends Executive Producer and occasional Director Kevin Bright recently shot down the idea that the cast would still go ahead with the May taping by doing it remotely online. On May 12 he told Maria Menounos on her YouTube show Better Together, “We feel the reunion needs to be done in front of an audience; we can’t not share it after all this time. So, tentatively speaking, we’re hoping that the special will be completed by Thanksgiving.”
By that point maybe all of the stars will have ideas on how their characters would have handled being in lockdown for several months. Kevin revealed some juicy tidbits to Maria, including that if it was up to him, Phoebe would have never ended up with Mike and instead Matt LeBlanc’s Joey would have been her lobster. “There was something really cute to me about Joey and Phoebe,” he explained. “I felt a little robbed that Phoebe found Paul Rudd. I felt like Joey and Phoebe could’ve been a great thing.” He added about Lisa and Matt’s chemistry, “There was something very provocative about it. It had a lot of potential.” This is the type of juicy stuff that is going to be discussed on the reunion special, so it will be totally worth the extra wait for die-hard Friends fans.