Find a quiet spot, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🌙 ✦ A butterfly beating its wings in the Amazon rainforest could, in the familiar example, help set off a tornado in Texas weeks later.
That was the butterfly effect.
It was hard to say whether the change in Emily’s casting had anything to do with Adrian.
But when life started over, even under similar conditions, the answer would not come out exactly the same.
Even if Adrian knew the story had changed, it would not have stopped him from doing what he needed to do.
Play the role well.
“I want to know why you touched behind your ear when you said that line,” the director asked after they finished shooting a scene where Marco and Rachel talked alone.
“Your view of the character is that he’s shy,” Adrian said.
“When he’s away from work and alone with a woman, he doesn’t know how to relax.
But women see that as cute.
In my experience, men like that tend to have small nervous habits.
Touching just under the ear is easy to read as awkward rather than strange, and it can make him more likable.” “Sounds like you’ve got plenty of experience charming women, Adrian,” someone teased at once.
The director asked, half serious and half amused, “Do you always like making your own decisions?” “If you think it doesn’t fit, I can change it any time.” Adrian’s answer was clean.
He had talent and some performance experience.
After getting the role, he had only an afternoon and a night to prepare, but he had used the time well.
The character was simple enough to understand.
Marco’s comedy came from the fact that Rachel wanted to date him while he kept trying to sell her clothes.
Their conversation had the strange rhythm of two people in two entirely different scenes.
But Marco was also shy.
He did not say things clearly.
That made Rachel misread him even more and push harder.
In the end, Marco was attracted to Rachel too, and finally gathered the courage to tell her.
Add Phoebe losing out to Rachel, then dragging Joey along to cause trouble, and the episode had the kind of comic structure Friends liked to repeat because it worked.
Outside the scenes, Adrian got along well with the crew.
He was modest, friendly, polite, willing to help with small things, good-looking, and funny when the moment allowed it.
Most people liked him, including the leads.
Jennifer and Courteney had been easy enough after the first day.
Jennifer had come to run lines and tease him, and Courteney had joined in.
After that, Adrian worked most often with Jennifer, Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe, and Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey.
With Jennifer and Courteney nearby, it was not difficult to start talking with the others.
Once he had a rhythm with them, David Schwimmer was easy too, especially because Adrian could talk about theater.
Matthew Perry, who played Chandler, was different.
Adrian saw him only twice from the start of filming to the end.
Perry seemed exhausted and uneven, sharp in one moment and withdrawn in the next.
Once, after snapping at an assistant, he apologized so quickly that the tension in the room faded before anyone could turn it into gossip.
Frederick’s warning came back to Adrian: be professional, don’t stare, don’t gossip, and don’t repeat anything you think you saw.
Whatever was happening around Perry was private.
Adrian had no business making it part of his own story.
So he gave Perry space.
The first time Adrian introduced himself, Perry nodded politely.
The second time, Perry looked at him for a second and asked, “Sorry, remind me who you are?” Adrian had built connections with the other five.
If he needed a chance later, it was not impossible.
For some reason, though, the more he watched the six leads, the more he felt that the three men had a deeper bond with one another than the public usually noticed.
The schedule was tight, and they had to work overtime twice.
But the director kept control, and NBC had Friends in its Thursday slot.
Somehow, the episode was completed in time for broadcast.
Then Adrian faced something he had never experienced in either life.
October 29.
Thursday.
After sunset, countless American households finished dinner, turned on their televisions, and began looking for something to watch.
In the Balboa Park area of San Diego, a man named Conner and his girlfriend Kelly settled onto the sofa early and switched to NBC.
They had followed Friends from the beginning and had not missed an episode.
Tonight was no exception.
Their laughter kept coming.
“Oh, he’s adorable.
I love this new character.
He’s like Joey, but different.” Kelly shouted at the screen while Marco faced Rachel’s bold invitation in visible confusion.
“Exactly like me back then,” Conner said, full of himself.
One liked Rachel.
The other liked Joey.
Both liked the new character.
The deeper the episode went, the more they enjoyed him.
In an apartment in St.
Paul, Minnesota, a man named John watched NBC’s flagship sitcom with a few friends.
He was not a Friends fan at first, but one of the others wanted to watch, so he went along with it.
Ten minutes later, he was laughing into the phone.
“Hey, David, I think you guys should watch Friends.
It’s great.” After hanging up, he pointed at the television and laughed again.
“Oh, hell, what is this guy doing?
He’s on a date with a beautiful woman and still trying to sell clothes?” “I like him,” one of his friends said.
“He reminds me of a guy at work.
No sense of romance at all.
Always mixing work and his personal life.” On screen, Marco sat in a restaurant with Rachel, carefully trying to steer the conversation back to dresses and blouses.
Every time he almost reached the point, Rachel noticed.
Every time she noticed, he panicked and changed the subject.
His nervous dignity made the bit funny again and again.
Add Phoebe and Joey spying from another table, and the scene landed hard.
In Manhattan, at a coffeehouse near 79th Street, people gathered around the television the owner had set up.
There was no real Central Perk, of course, but coffeehouses across Greenwich Village and the surrounding neighborhoods were full of Friends fans that night.
Watching Friends in one of those places had become a small pleasure for people in the neighborhood.
Tonight was no different.
Laughter and arguments carried through the room.
“Ha.
Joey again.
When is he going to stop showing off?” “If he stopped, would you still like him?” “If he still had something special, why not?” “Then who would show off like that?” “That kid’s pretty good.
He could become a Janice type, show up for an episode or two now and then.” On television, the story had reached one of its peaks.
Joey and Marco met in the apartment.
Phoebe, annoyed that she had lost to Rachel, encouraged Joey to interfere.
After hearing Marco was Italian-American, Joey declared that he would teach the kid a lesson in Italian.
He entered the room, asked a question in terrible Italian, and was met with a fluent answer.
Now trapped, Joey had no choice but to keep going in completely fake Italian, using exaggerated gestures to sell nonsense.
It was almost impossible not to laugh.
At last, defeated by the performance, Marco raised both hands helplessly.
“All right.
Maybe we should use English.” “Why didn’t you say you spoke English?” Joey’s eyes went wide with wounded outrage.
The studio audience roared, and so did the people watching on television.
The comedy worked.
With the main story paced like a normal Friends episode, the Rachel and Marco date, with Phoebe and Joey trying to sabotage it, won more attention than the Monica and Chandler secret-relationship thread in which Ross nearly caught them and they scrambled to explain.
Similar scenes played out across the country that night.
Couples, families, friends, and roommates laughed at the newest episode.
Some households even argued over the television: some wanted the game, others wanted Friends or another show entirely.
Some compromised.
Some fought.
Some went to a neighbor’s house or a coffee shop.
Families with two televisions had fewer problems.
It was only one episode of a popular sitcom.
But if someone had lifted a magnifying glass to America that night, he would have seen all kinds of small stories.
There were people calling friends halfway through and telling them to turn on NBC.
There were people who missed it because of work, traffic, dates, games, children, and bad luck, then spent the night regretting it.
One particular young man was among them.
✦ ✦ ✦ 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.