'Friends' Monkey Trainer Hits Back at David Schwimmer for Slamming His Time With Marcel on Set

Look out, Ryan Murphy, we've got the next season of Feud all ready to go! Friendsstar David Schwimmer resurfaced his past beef with the monkeys who played Ross' pal, Marcel, on the hit sitcom during the recent HBO Max reunion special, and now the trainer of the monkeys is taking it a step further. 

During the special, Schwimmer complained about the monkeys, saying, "Here is my problem: The monkey, obviously, was trained. It had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time. What inevitably began to happen was we would all have choreographed bits kind of timed out, and it would get messed up because the monkey didn't do its job right. So we would have to reset, we'd have to go again, because the monkey didn't get it right."

In a new interview with The Sun, handler Mike Morris, who worked with the monkeys who played Marcel on the series, claimed Schwimmer was "jealous" of the laughs the animals received. 

“Schwimmer was fine with the monkeys for the first couple of episodes and happy to be there," he said. “But people would laugh at the monkey and I think he got jealous because it wasn’t him getting the laughs." 

Morris specifically defended Katie, one of the two monkeys who played Marcel, saying that the capuchin monkey has worked with Dustin Hoffman as well as Schwimmer's Friends co-stars, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc, claiming the animal only had a problem with Schwimmer. 

Morris added that Schwimmer's comments trampled the memory of the other animal who played Marcel, referred to as Monkey, who died at the age of 36 last year. 

“I have never ever watched Friends because of Schwimmer’s comments about the monkeys," Morris told The Sun. "I have refused to ever since he did an interview after the animals got written out of the show and he said they tried to bite him and throw poop at him."

This isn't the first time Schwimmer has complained about the monkeys. Back in 1995, he told Entertainment Weekly, "I hate the monkey. The trainers won't let me bond with it. They're really, really possessive. It's like, 'Land on your marks, do your job, don't touch or bond with the monkey.' It's a bummer."

Morris also responded to this claim in his new interview, saying, “It is true that we prefer that actors don’t become too friendly with the monkey. An actor is a prop to the monkey and has to work with that prop. We don’t want them to become friends because then they think ‘Oh it’s my friend, I don’t have to work.’"

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