After years of waiting, the Friends are back! Photo / HBO
After years of waiting, the Friends are back! Photo / HBO
After years of waiting, Friends is finally back!
HBO Max announced it will air the unscripted Friends: The Reunion on May 27, and now it has dropped the trailer.
The special has Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer returning to the comedy's original soundstage, with Joey asking if Courteney's lines are still written on the table.
The trailer shows the cast gathering on a recreation of their iconic set, playing a trivia game about the show, doing a table read of a scene, and sharing memories of starring on the hit sitcom and the phenomena it became.
After years of waiting, the Friends are back! Photo / HBO
The stars will also reenact famous scenes, and there will no doubt be tears.
Upon returning to the set, Aniston said "we've literally just slipped right back", while Kudrow says "we have such a bond from this show".
And the cast were quizzed about one detail viewers were left hanging on for - whether Ross and Rachel were actually "on a break".
The cast of Friends are reuniting and will be recreating old scenes from their original series. Photo / HBO
And as well as the original cast, the reunion special directed by Ben Winston will feature a host of all-star guests from David Beckham to Justin Bieber, BTS, James Corden, Cindy Crawford, Cara Delevingne, Lady Gaga, Elliott Gould, Kit Harington, Larry Hankin, Mindy Kaling, Thomas Lennon, Christina Pickles, Tom Selleck, James Michael Tyler, Maggie Wheeler, Reese Witherspoon and Malala Yousafzai.
News of the official release comes after Cox teased how "emotional" it was when filming wrapped in April, telling the Ellen DeGeneres show on May 6: "It's an unscripted reunion but we got to be on Stage 24 for the first time, all of us, in like … I forgot how many years. 15 years? Or 17 years?"
The reunion was first announced in February 2020, originally set to launch on HBO Max last May, but the Covid-19 pandemic led to production being halted twice.
But this also gave them more time to make it "even more exciting", Aniston told Deadline last August.
"So I choose to see it as the glass is half-full that it got postponed. Look, we're not going anywhere. You're never going to get rid of Friends, sorry. You're stuck with us for life guys.
The long-awaited Friends reunion special will air on HBO Max on May 27. Photo / Getty Images
And Schwimmer shared on the Graham Norton Show in April that he was heading to Los Angeles to shoot the reunion.
"I'm going to see everyone next week for the first time in many years."
Friends aired for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC. And leading up to the reunion, US network TBS announced it will air all 236 episodes of the show in their Friends: From The Beginning marathon, running until June 4.
