David Schwimmer reveals ‘startling’ Friends line fans still shout at him

‘It never gets old,’ Goosebumps star says

David Schwimmer has disclosed which line from Friends fans still yell at him on the street, 20 years after the series finale.

Friends followed a group of six twentysomethings – Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Monica (Courteney Cox), Ross (David Schwimmer), Chandler (Matthew Perry), Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) – living in New York City. The show ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004.

In a recent appearance on Good Morning America, Schwimmer talked about the legacy of Friends and how fans still reference the iconic “pivot” line when they see him.

“It never gets old. I get a lot of people shouting ‘Pivot!’ at me,” Schwimmer, 58, said.

The line appeared in the season five episode “The One with the Cop”, where Ross tries to move his new sofa up to his apartment with a little help from Rachel and Chandler. However, despite his best attempts at getting his friends to “PIVOT”, they ultimately have to concede defeat.

“Sometimes it’s startling,” he said. “But also it’s just a reminder that the series lives on.”

Rachel, Chandler and Ross try to get Ross's sofa up the stairs in the famous 'Pivot!' scene (YouTube)

Schwimmer, who was on the show to promote his new Goosebumps series The Vanishing, called the beloved sitcom “the gift that keeps on giving”, adding that he also still hears about the positive impact of the series from fans.

“When I meet people on the street from another country and they say, ‘I just have to say, I learned English watching your show’, or a father stops me and says, ‘My kid was really, really ill and the one thing that kept them going in the hospital was just watching Friends‘, you feel really grateful and blessed to have done something that people find fun,” he said.

The cast of Friends (Getty Images)

Schwimmer talked about his friendship with LeBlanc, and how they felt looking back at the show 30 years later.

“LeBlanc and I are pretty close, even though I live in New York and he’s in LA,” Schwimmer said.

“What’s fun is we’ve got the kind of friendship, we may not talk — we all have friends like this — we may not talk for months but out of nowhere, he’ll send me a message with a clip from the show. It’s always funny to relive something we shot, what 25 years ago? Or more.

“And anyway, so he sent me something like, a couple of days ago that totally surprised me. I genuinely forgot what we’ve shot, but it’s a moment where he just rips my shirt off.”

The cast became megastars thanks to the hit NBC sitcom and the syndication that followed. It became a classic among the millennial generation, securing an estimated $136m for each main character and spawning a multi-million dollar merchandising empire in the process.

It gained new interest among a younger generation when it aired on Netflix years after its original run on NBC and cable television.