Jennifer Aniston's Rachel looks up as she sits in a chair in Monica's apartment on Friends

The “Friends” theme song, “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts, is considered one of the best theme songs of the 1990s — but according to several cast members, the actors themselves didn’t necessarily love filming the imagery that accompanied it.

During a 2016 appearance on the United Kingdom’s “The One Show” to promote her film “Office Christmas Party,” Jennifer Aniston was asked by host Matt Baker what she feels when she hears “I’ll Be There for You” — and she didn’t hold back.

“No one was really a big fan of that theme song,” she said, appearing to reference the full ensemble. “We felt it was a little, I don’t know. Dancing in a pond? A fountain felt sort of odd. But we did it… because we were told to.”

Lisa Kudrow Called the Main Title Sequence a ‘Nightmare’

The cast of Friends jumps in a fountain during the opening sequence of Friends

Aniston isn’t the only former “Friends” cast member to comment on filming the opening sequence, which shows the six actors in and around a large fountain on the Warner Bros. lot.

 

During a 2024 appearance on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast, Lisa Kudrow described the shoot as a “nightmare.” She explained: “I don’t like discomfort at all. Mild, any kind, I don’t like it. And that fountain was cold. And it was very late at night. We’d done, I think, 500 takes of dancing — unmotivated dancing is hard, too, right? It’s just… it’s hard.” Kudrow added that she and her co-stars kept receiving new instructions during the shoot, recalling one particular note — “Hey! What if you play with that scarf?” — and her response: “No! I don’t want to! It’s not funny!”

Kudrow said Matthew Perry helped ease the mood by cracking jokes, responding to the director’s request for one more take with, “One more? Okay. Can’t remember a time I wasn’t in a fountain. Seriously, can’t remember a time I wasn’t wet.”

Courteney Cox offered a similar recollection in a separate interview with Ellen DeGeneres, saying, “We were in that fountain for a long time. Somebody thought that would just be really fun, and let me tell you what happens — it’s not fun to be dancing in a fountain for hours and hours.”