Friends forever: Who’s had the best career since the end of the show?

For as long as the stars of Friends have been famous, people have gossiped about their careers outside of Friends. Remember the big “Which ones are gonna become movie stars?” debate at the tail-end of the Nineties? “Is Jennifer Aniston the next Julia Roberts?” asked magazines of the era. Or: “Why did Matt LeBlanc think co-starring with a baseball-playing chimp would help him become Tom Hanks?”

Eighteen years after the end of Friends, people are still fascinated by the not-so-friendly acting adventures of Aniston, LeBlanc, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer. Which of them are “in”, which of them are “out”, and who’s made the most interesting choices since their titanic sitcom hit came to a close?

Our fascination with their careers is partly down to Friends’ cultural omnipresence back when it was first airing, and its continued importance to the pop culture economy today. But there’s also been something thrilling about watching six gazillionaires make choices they don’t necessarily have to make. If Aniston and her co-stars wanted to, they could have vanished after Friends and sat on their money for the rest of their lives. But instead, they’ve tended to surprise us.

Whether it’s LeBlanc’s run on Top Gear or Schwimmer directing a child-grooming thriller, the Friends cast have been admirably bold in their decisions since the end of the show, often refusing to merely settle into the most obvious of post-sitcom paths.

As Cox returns to television with the horror-comedy Shining Vale, which begins on STARZPlay this week, we’ve surveyed the post-Friends years of the classic show’s six stars.

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It was determined early on that Aniston would be the breakout star of Friends. She seemed to get the most magazine covers, her haircut was mimicked worldwide, and that was before she got married to Brad Pitt, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. That he ran off with Angelina Jolie while they were still betrothed only accelerated Aniston’s global fame. Even if that kind of attention became more of an albatross weighing her down than an asset.

In the wake of Friends, Aniston quickly kicked off a balance of comedies and dramas. The small-scale indie Friends with Money remains one of the best post-Friends movies by all six stars, Aniston brittle and melancholy as a directionless woman working as a maid. Many of her higher-profile romcoms warrant a second look, too – Along Came Polly is a sweetly conventional example of the genre, The Break-Up an intriguingly deconstructed one – while she is sensational as a nymphomaniac dentist in the dark comedy Horrible Bosses and a hippie wife in the counterculture satire Wanderlust.

The past decade wasn’t the kindest to her in terms of movies, though, with ensemble pics Office Christmas Party, We’re the Millers and Mother’s Day either mistaking f-bombs for gags or neutering Aniston’s natural spikiness. Cake, in which she deglammed herself to play a grieving woman suffering from chronic pain, earned her a Golden Globe nomination but needed a bit more oomph. It made sense that she’d return to TV soon afterwards. Unfortunately, her TV comeback via Apple’s The Morning Show has been a mixed bag. Playing the sunny yet fraying anchorwoman of a daytime talk show, Aniston has been reliably brilliant, but the show itself is an unbearable mix of smug writing and deranged plot twists. It speaks to a recurring problem she’s had of late: material that rarely matches up to the talent she brings to it.

Verdict: “Always stuck in second gear…”

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The dark horse of the Friends cast, Cox spent her years on the show with a smash mega-franchise to her name in the form of the Scream movies. There, she could be funny as well as believably ruthless, playing a tabloid reporter as conniving as she is loveable. Overall, though, movies never seemed to be Cox’s biggest ambition. After Friends, she largely popped up in minor supporting roles in films, along with the little-seen indie November, where she played a lonely photographer who survives a shooting. It’s worth a look if you can find it. She’s also great in both Scream 4 and the recently released franchise reboot Scream, both of which use her sparingly but successfully.

On TV, Cox made her hour-long debut in the drama series Dirt, in which she played a tabloid editor working at the peak of Perez Hilton and Lindsay Lohan on the cover of the National Enquirer. Cox was always great in it, but the series never quite knew whether to fully embrace camp or grit. In the end it was neither. Even a guest spot from Aniston as Cox’s tabloid editor rival wasn’t quite as fun as it should have been.

She had better luck with Cougar Town, a frothy ensemble comedy that eventually found its footing after abandoning its early “middle-aged mum starts dating younger men” premise. While it was never a massive hit – and always seemed on the verge of cancellation throughout its six-season run – it earned a devoted fanbase. Hopefully the same will happen with Shining Vale, in which she plays a stunted erotica writer whose new home is possessed by a ghost. Written by Sharon Horgan, it has that same acerbic wit that made Catastrophe so watchable, and Cox is marvellous.

Verdict: “Someone I’ll always laugh with…”

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The most natural comedian on Friends and far and away the cast member with the widest range, Kudrow made some of the best movies (Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, The Opposite of Sex) and was the first out of the gate with a follow-up TV show. The Comeback, released in early 2005, remains the greatest thing a Friends star has been involved in since Friends, and also one of the smartest comedies in TV history. Playing Valerie Cherish, a one-hit-wonder sitcom star desperate for a fame resurgence, Kudrow is tragicomic genius; a sad, heartbreaking but also completely delusional agent of chaos. Ironically cancelled after one season but then brought back years later once it’d achieved cult status, The Comeback was so ahead of its time that it was practically beamed in from the future.

Outside of that show, Kudrow has carved out an enviable career in movies, popping up in some of the most enjoyable comedies of the last 18 years: a teacher in teen classic Easy A, a try-hard mum in Olivia Wilde’s buddy comedy Booksmart, a tone-deaf image consultant in the Seth Rogen/Charlize Theron romcom Long Shot, and a nightmare academic in the Seth Rogen/Zac Efron vehicle Bad Neighbours.

In general, Kudrow seems to just have very good taste, also foregoing big TV roles for scene-stealing turns in niche comedies like Channel 4’s lovely Mae Martin series Feel Good, or the star-studded Zoom-before-Zoom-was-a-thing series Web Therapy. Sure, she’s currently stuck on the dismal Netflix comedy Space Force with Steve Carell and John Malkovich, but that at least seemed like a good idea on paper.

Verdict: “So far, things are going great…”

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The most relatable of the Friends cast, because who wouldn’t want to earn millions from one job and then muddle around for years after? LeBlanc has perfected the art of doing whatever he pleases. Joey, the doomed LeBlanc spin-off series that began four months after Friends, was obviously an error, but was also the luckiest of mistakes: it got cancelled after just two seasons, long enough to weather a number of unsuccessful retools, but short enough that it’s now been almost entirely forgotten.

He also had a lengthy run on the secretly not very good but undeniably successful BBC sitcom Episodes, in which he played a narcissistic and vapid version of himself. Then there was his time as one of the hosts of Top Gear. Not being a forty-something father of three with a Nissan in his garage, I’ve never actually seen Top Gear, but it seemed to be a win for LeBlanc: coupled with his salt-and-pepper hair and the memes about his spare tyre and resemblance to all of our dads, he’s today regarded as a softly spoken and sweetly down to earth star only monsters would have a problem with.

Verdict: “You’re still in bed at 10…”

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Perry has always disappeared into work with far more ease than you might assume. He’s very good at playing slick bastards and politicians, or draining the brightness from his Chandler Bing persona, and it’s served him well in the wake of Friends. Aaron Sorkin’s sketch show drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip may have been a high-profile flop – and, until The Morning Show, the most annoying project a Friends alum has been involved with – but Perry was great in it, likewise in his recurring role as a Republican attorney in The Good Wife and a grieving cynic in the annoyingly short-lived comedy Go On.

His output has lacked staying power, though. A stint in the West End with The End of Longing, a play he wrote and starred in, drew mixed reviews, while a potential sitcom comeback courtesy of a TV revival of the classic film The Odd Couple sank without a trace. A supporting role in last year’s star-studded asteroid satire Don’t Look Up also ended up on the cutting room floor. You just wish he had better luck with projects worthy of his time. Like Aniston, he’s often far better than his material.

Off-camera, you also want the best for him. In his forthcoming memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry will write about experiencing the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in his personal life. “I have lived to tell the tale,” he declared in a press release last month, “even though at times it looked like I wouldn’t.” Perry has had numerous private struggles over the years – both during and reportedly after Friends, and largely kept under the radar. Potentially putting it all out there may be the most healing thing he could do.

Verdict: “I’ll be there for you…”

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Of the Friends men, Schwimmer seemed best placed to become a movie star during the show’s prime. He seemed the most ambitious of the cast, and spent his summers in between seasons taking advantage of his newfound celebrity: directing movies, starring in glossy romcoms, playing oddball supporting characters in indie dramas. Besides the high-profile romcoms – which always had the feel of Ross Geller: The Cinematic Universe, anyway – he’s largely stayed the same since Friends went off the air.

Schwimmer has directed two very different movies since then: the Simon Pegg romcom Run Fatboy Run and the dark cyber-thriller Trust starring Clive Owen and Viola Davis. Neither were big hits, but they’re individually worth watching, if only to experience the sheer novelty of Schwimmer as a film director. On the acting front, his career has been mixed. He’s convincingly bemused as lawyer Robert Kardashian in the limited series The People vs OJ Simpson, if slightly overshadowed by the numerous superstars who also appear in it. The Madagascar films were a hit, and he’s decent in Steven Soderbergh’s recent tax-haven satire The Laundromat. Less good was the swiftly cancelled drama series Feed the Beast, in which he was incredibly miscast as an alcoholic restaurateur tangling with the New York mob. On a similar note, his under-the-radar Sky comedy Intelligence – about an NSA agent working for the British government – has yet to break big.

It all adds to Schwimmer’s strange appeal, though. Of the Friends cast, he’s the actor most likely to pop up somewhere slightly perplexing. And being “the mysterious one” of the ensemble probably has its benefits.

Verdict: “No one could ever know me…”

‘Shining Vale’ is available to stream on STARZPLAY now, via Prime, Apple TV, Virgin TV, Roku and Rakuten