When you think about Matt LeBlanc’s portrayal of Joey Tribbiani on Friends — one of the best sitcoms of all time — you might recall his most hilarious quotes about food or the disgusting task of eating Rachel’s Thanksgiving trifle. David Schwimmer, however, has one not-so-fond memory. The actor who played Ross Gellar recalled one “genuinely frightening” incident that happened on the set of Friends that involved LeBlanc getting injured while shooting a scene.
David Schwimmer, who is set to star on the new season of Goosebumps on the 2025 TV schedule (streaming with either a Disney+ subscription or a Hulu subscription), recalled a pretty scary scene back when they were filming a Season 3 episode of Friends. In “The One Where No One’s Ready,” Joey and Chandler’s fight over a chair had quite a painful ending for Matt LeBlanc, as Schwimmer told EW:
During the live taping of the show, [Matt LeBlanc] is supposed to do a kind of a pratfall, and he actually dislocated his shoulder. He went totally white, and he stood up, and I could see his shoulder was out. He looked like he was going to pass out.
If it weren’t for the fact that Matt LeBlanc was injured in the filming of that scene, it would actually be pretty funny that the characters’ childish argument ended in one of them getting hurt. Joey and Chandler (Matthew Perry) were being quite petty, with Joey stealing the chair cushions — “the essence of the chair” — when he went to get ready for Ross’ work event. He then realized that Chandler had hid all of his underwear and responded by putting on everything Chandler owned. “Could I BE wearing any more clothes?”
To have to see Matt LeBlanc hurt in such a way, however, must have been so unsettling for David Schwimmer and his co-stars — not only to see the dislocated shoulder, but to see how the injury affected LeBlanc. Schwimmer said he quickly called for help, continuing:
[I was] immediately turning to the camera like, 'Cut, cut, cut.' That was genuinely frightening. You could see how badly hurt he was. And we had to stop filming that night, obviously, and he went to hospital.
With Friends being one of the most rewatchable TV shows, some fans might not have realized that Matt LeBlanc actually hurt himself in that episode, but they likely remember the one that followed — “The One With the Jam.” At the beginning of that episode, Chandler is shown reacting to Joey supposedly dislocating his shoulder while jumping on the bed, thus explaining why his arm was in a sling for the rest of that episode.
More than two decades later, that’s one behind-the-scenes story that David Schwimmer hasn’t quite gotten over, as he emphasized:
That was scary.
If you want to relive one of David Schwimmer’s scariest moments from Friends (and Matt LeBlanc probably doesn’t love it either), all 10 seasons of Friends are available to stream with a Max subscription. You can also see Schwimmer when Goosebumps premieres on Friday, January 10 on Disney+ and Hulu.
