David Schwimmer Grew to Really Hate the ‘Friends’ Theme

It’s hard to imagine Friends without its catchy, clap-filled theme song “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts, the Los Angeles band that impressed the show’s producers with their ability to be way more affordable than R.E.M.

The song’s association with the popular sitcom actually made it a hit in 1995 when “I’ll Be There for You” reached number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. 

But by the time the show ended in 2004, most of America was sick to death of this jangly earworm. But it wasn’t just viewers that grew weary of this tune, at least one Friends cast member really started to dislike the song, too.

David Schwimmer recently guested on the podcast Making a Scene, hosted by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, and addressed his rocky relationship with the show’s legacy. Specifically, he discussed his aversion to the theme song. “I’ll be really honest, there was a time, for quite a while, that just hearing the theme song would really (deep sigh),” Schwimmer explained. “You know what I mean? I’d just have that reaction. I mean, I just had heard it so many times.”

“Well, no one told you life was gonna be that way,” Lucas joked, to the apparent non-amusement of Schwimmer.

While Schwimmer contends that he never watched Friends once they were done making it, the actor’s relationship to the theme song wasn’t just limited to the production of the series, it still followed him wherever he went. “Any time you’d go on a show or a talk show or an interview, that would be your intro song. So, you know, I just didn’t have the greatest response to it for a period of time,” Schwimmer confessed. 

He isn’t the only Friends actor who found the song to be grating either. In a 2016 interview Jennifer Aniston suggested that most of the cast disliked it. “No one was really a big fan of that theme song,” the actress claimed, adding that dancing around in that fountain also felt “a little odd” at the time. Even The Rembrandts themselves weren’t wild about the song, which quickly became an “albatross” around the band’s neck, and even contributed to their break up.

But for Schwimmer, he now views Friends and its theme song in a different light, thanks to his child. “At about age nine, my kid discovered (Friends) and started watching it,” Schwimmer recalled. “And 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 again.”

Of course, once his kid gets older, it’s possible they may come to the realization that their dad’s character was a big creep, and Schwimmer’s relationship to the show might sour once again.