Find a quiet spot, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🌙 ✦ “Wait, Coco.
Time wasn’t up.” Jennifer immediately turned toward the woman stepping out from the side.
The other woman wore a triumphant smile and clearly did not care.
“We agreed on ten minutes.
If you couldn’t get the new guy to ask for an autograph within ten minutes, you lost.
It’s been eleven.” “I was about to succeed.
Then you came out and ruined all my work.” Jennifer sounded annoyed, though more in the manner of someone refusing to lose gracefully than someone truly angry.
The other woman remained smug.
“Come on, Jen.
I gave you an extra minute.
A loss is a loss.” “If the limit was ten minutes and you gave me eleven, that violates the terms of the bet.
Therefore the bet doesn’t count.” Now she was plainly refusing to lose.
“Ladies,” Adrian said, his eyelid practically twitching, “may I ask what’s happening?” Only then did the two women seem to remember he was standing there.
The argument cut off.
The woman Jennifer had called Coco recovered first and offered her hand.
“Hi, Adrian.
Courteney Cox.
Also Monica Geller.
Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too, Courteney.” Adrian shook her hand, then glanced at Jennifer with faint amusement.
“Was that one acceptable?” “Perfectly acceptable,” Jennifer said at once.
“Courteney works just fine.” “Jen,” Courteney warned, giving her a look before turning back to Adrian.
“Sorry.
When new actors join the show, they usually end up asking us for autographs.
Jen heard a newcomer was playing Marco Moretti and insisted you’d do it too, so we made a bet.
If that made you uncomfortable…” “It’s fine,” Adrian said before she could finish.
“Truthfully, I was thinking about asking.
I only held back because I had just met Jennifer.” “Hear that, Coco?
He admits he was about to ask.” Jennifer seized the opening as if it could overturn the entire trial.
The liveliness in her expression had more than a little Rachel in it.
Which made sense.
If an actor and character shared nothing, David Crane would never have chosen her in the first place.
“No matter how much you struggle, dear Jen, you lost.” Courteney pinched Jennifer’s cheek with a grin.
She had some Monica in her too.
The rumors about their closeness were true, then.
Adrian shrugged and cleared his throat.
“Ladies, may I go back to reading my script now?” “Absolutely not,” Jennifer said immediately, escaping Courteney’s hand.
“You didn’t actually think I came over here only because of a bet, did you?” She folded her arms and leaned forward slightly.
Her expression hovered between a smile and a warning, though her cheeks puffed a little, as if she felt underestimated.
“Of course not, Jennifer,” Adrian said at once.
In moments like this, it was wiser to follow the direction a woman had already chosen.
Contradicting it rarely ended well.
“That’s why I asked.” Fortunately, Jennifer did not make him suffer.
She lifted the pages in her hand.
“I came to say hello and to run lines.
This isn’t a film.
The director doesn’t have time to schedule a special table read just for us.” In film, a director often gathered the key actors before shooting to read scenes and build familiarity.
Television could do similar work, but not always, and Friends had only six regular leads.
Half of this episode had already been shot.
Most of what remained involved Adrian.
No one was going to arrange a formal meeting for a guest actor at the last minute.
The director had forgotten to explain it to him.
Adrian, being new, had not known enough to ask.
So Jennifer had come to him.
Once he understood, Adrian apologized.
“Sorry, Ms…
Jennifer.
I don’t know all the process yet.” “It’s fine.
We can start now.
And yes, call me Jennifer.” Even if she had been mildly annoyed earlier, his quick apology helped.
“Don’t forget Lisa’s scenes,” Courteney reminded her.
According to the script, Marco was a salesman Rachel met while shopping for clothes, with Phoebe beside her.
Monica did not appear in that shopping scene because she had her own secret-relationship storyline.
Ever since the end of season four, Monica and Chandler had been moving toward something that had to stay hidden for now.
So Phoebe accompanied Rachel, also took an interest in Marco, and competed with her for him.
Friends had used that kind of comic rivalry before, and it usually worked.
“Lisa’s in her trailer on the phone,” Jennifer said, pushing the script into Courteney’s arms.
“You can stand in for her.” That was how Adrian ended up reading lines in the actors’ rest area with Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, two of the biggest stars on the show.
He had practiced the lines so many times he could have recited them in his sleep.
Naomi had run them with him over and over the night before.
Because of that, the work felt easier than he expected.
“You put feeling into the lines every time,” Jennifer said when they finished.
“Is this really your first acting job?” She had met plenty of new actors.
She had also met plenty of hardworking new actors.
But few treated every casual line run as if it mattered.
“I did stage plays in school,” Adrian said honestly.
“I learned how to hold an emotion.” “That explains it.
I did stage work too, though sadly not for anything resembling money.” Jennifer looked briefly nostalgic, then recovered with a grin and patted him on the arm.
“Work hard, Adrian.
Stage experience doesn’t automatically make you good on television.
Theater and TV aren’t the same.” Then she leaned a little closer, looking him over in a deliberately teasing way.
“Honestly, if I didn’t have a boyfriend, I might ask you out.” Adrian choked on a cough and looked down.
Jennifer laughed, and Courteney rolled her eyes while pulling her away.
Even as they left, he could hear Jennifer teasing from a distance.
“Wow, he’s adorable.” He had been flirted with.
Women usually weren’t the ones teasing him.
Adrian smiled to himself.
Being teased by the famous Rachel Green was not exactly a tragedy.
Plenty of people would pay to be embarrassed that way.
Still, whatever small thought he might have had was better put aside.
Jennifer was a star.
He was a guest actor on his first role.
As for the work, he felt confident.
After so much preparation and a line run with Jennifer, he knew he could do the scenes.
Stage acting and sitcom acting had similarities.
Both required heightened expressions and physical beats.
On stage, the audience could be far away and all around, so movement had to read.
In a sitcom, limited sets and multi-camera coverage meant performance carried much of the rhythm.
Dialogue mattered, but so did timing, expression, and just enough exaggeration to make the joke land.
Performance under pressure was not a problem.
Adrian had acted in front of hundreds of people before.
Why would cameras and crew frighten him?
Two lives had given him a steadiness most people his age could not fake.
At first, the shoot went exactly as he hoped.
Several shots passed on the first take.
The extra takes they did need came from Jennifer or from technical issues, not him.
The director praised him more than once.
That did not mean everything stayed easy.
Jennifer had been right.
Theater and television were not the same.
The most obvious difference was rhythm.
Stage scenes could run long, requiring an actor to carry a continuous emotional arc.
Television was broken into fragments.
Sometimes they shot for one or two minutes, stopped for ten, then picked up again.
Actors coming from theater often struggled with it.
Build the emotion, stop.
Find it again, stop.
Repeat until the scene lost its shape.
Adrian ran into that problem too.
His nerves were strong, but his experience was thin.
After the initial shine, his number of retakes began to rise.
He did not panic.
Frederick had warned him this might happen, so he had expected it.
The mistakes reminded him not to get overconfident, and he corrected them quickly.
Of course, too many mistakes would annoy everyone.
The schedule was tight, overtime had to be kept low, and the episode could not miss its airdate.
Several producers had already made the crew want to grind their teeth.
Any drop in efficiency would sour the mood.
So now and then Adrian could not help thinking that if he remembered more of Friends season five, the acting would be easier.
What Adrian did not know was that history had already changed.
In the old life, Ross had still said Rachel’s name at the wedding.
That turn, if Adrian remembered right, had come from an accident in rehearsal that the writers turned into story.
Baxendale’s pregnancy later limited Emily’s availability and affected how long the character remained on the show.
This time, the actress had changed.
So the story turned in another direction.
Ross and Rachel still knew they had feelings for each other, but life went on.
Ross honeymooned with Emily and bent over backward to please her.
Rachel, unwilling to lose, kept trying to find a better man.
That was how Adrian’s character came to exist.
The world had a funny way of rearranging itself.
✦ ✦ ✦ Ready for more?
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS TheBacklot Thank you for reading.
I hope this chapter drew you further into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.