If you were on social media at all over the weekend, chances are your friends and family were freaking out thinking Friends was coming back. Sorry, entire Internet, but it’s not. An eerily convincing, fan-made trailer for a reunion episode went viral, but it’s a total hoax.
The video has been viewed four million times on YouTube since it was posted on January 12, and a video re-uploaded to a fake Will Ferrell fan page, which is now renamed Funny Inc., has been viewed a whopping 52 million times since it was posted on January 19.
On YouTube, the description reads like it’s actually happening. Called ‘The One With the Reunion’, the episode apparently picks up a few years after the final season. Ben and Emma are grown up, Mike and Phoebe are having marriage troubles, Monica and Chandler are divorcing, Joey can’t find love, and Ross and Rachel haven’t been together for many years.
The trailer looks surprisingly convincing, cutting in clips of the cast members in the other projects they’ve worked on, including Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry’s guest-starring roles on Courteney Cox’s sitcom Cougar Town, E! News points out. And lots of people fell for it, and felt betrayed once they realised it was a hoax.
Lisa Kudrow said as much back in April. ‘It would be great [if it happened]. It would be a lot of fun,’ she told Heat magazine. ‘But even just from a logistical purpose, it would never work because everyone is on a totally, ridiculous work schedule, that’s the opposite of someone else. It’s even impossible for us to get together for dinner, it’s really hard. It’s six people, how easy it is for you to get six of your friends together?’
