The 'Friends' Reunion Special Is Finally Filming Next Week

The Friends reunion special is officially being taped next week

The long-awaited, and I mean, lonnngggg awaited HBO Max Friends reunion special is finally (FINALLY!) happening. Per Deadline and David Schwimmer, the OG cast of Friends will reunite next week in Los Angeles to shoot the forthcoming reunion special, the one the cast has been teasing us with for years.

The reunion special, titled “The One Where They Got Back Together,” was first announced in late 2019 to be filmed in early 2020. Last February, set designer Greg Grande shared a photo of the set as he was preparing to shoot the reunion special, but we all know what happened the following month. (Hint: the pandemic).

Since then, the reunion has been shelved as the world waits for the pandemic to end. Well, things are finally looking up in Los Angeles and next week the cast will head back to the same Warner Bros. set they used to film the show on back in the ’90s.

“Were going to be shooting the Friends reunion next week,” David Schwimmer told BBC talkshow host Graham Norton on Friday, April 2, 2021 . “Gonna see everyone for the first time in many years.”

Schwimmer revealed that the show is unscripted as in, it’s more of a casual class reunion than a scripted reboot.

“I’ll be myself. I’ll be David,” he said. “There’s nothing scripted. We’re not ‘in character.’ We’re all ourselves, the real people. Though there is one section of it that I don’t want to give away, but we all read something.”

So while you may not get to “see” Ross and Rachel and Monica, etc, you will get to see a lovely meeting of the minds between Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc. The core cast will join the show’s creators during the special, as well.

Aniston told fans (via Deadline) over the summer that the long delay has “given us more time to make it even more exciting and more fun than it would have been.”

The cast has been keeping the spirit of the reunion alive, despite the many set-backs due to the pandemic and Aniston says the number one reason they kept postponing the shoot was because they want to do the reunion in front of a live-studio audience to capture the essence of the original sitcom. However, they’ve been waiting for the time when it would be safe to gather a live audience together and with more vaccines rolling out everyday, that time is finally now.

Currently, all 236 episodes of Friends are available to watch on HBO Max and hopefully we don’t have to wait too long to see this new reunion episode as well. Now, say it with me, could we BE any happier?