The Friends Reunion Special Is Now Streaming ! Friends Reunion How Many Episodes

After months (or, at this point, years) of rumors and anticipation, the Friends reunion of our dreams is now a reality. The cast has gathered for a special on HBO's streaming service, HBO Max, following the iconic sitcom's 25th anniversary. And while there were some bumps in the road to production with the world on pause due to the pandemic, the event we've been waiting for is finally here. Ahead, everything we know about the project.

IT ARRIVES MAY 27. Friends Reunion length: How long is the Friends Reunion episode?

The reunion will only consist of one episode, which will feature the main cast as they revisit the set.

It's official! The Friends reunion, called "The One Where They Get Back Together," is now streaming on HBO Max as of Thursday, May 27. Viewers will need a subscription to the platform to watch.

The trailer shows the cast getting back together on the original Friends studio, testing their trivia knowledge of the show, revisiting key sets, re-reading their lines, and joining James Corden for a joint sit-down interview in front of a live audience.

In the more candid moments of the interview, we get to see how close the stars' real-life friendships really are. "I love you guys so much," one of the actors says in the middle of a group hug.

ALL THE STARS ARE COMING BACK.

Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler), and David Schwimmer (Ross) will reunite at the original Friends soundstage—Stage 24, at the Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank—to film. All six stars will also executive produce.

The Late Late Show writer Ben Winston will direct. He's also an executive producer, along with Friends EPs Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane; and Emma Conway and James Longman.

When the reunion news was announced, the leads all shared the same photo and caption on Instagram—"It's happening"—and tagged each other. (Good thing Aniston and Perry are now on the app.) The image, shot by Mark Seliger, is from the May 18, 1995 issue of Rolling Stone.

Speaking to Good Morning America with the full cast ahead of the reunion's release, Cox said, "I don't think ... any of us had any idea how emotional we would be when we walked onto the set." The studio looked "exactly the same," she explained, "and it was so emotional that we just started crying."

Perry agreed. "Reuniting this cast again—I knew it was gonna be a really seriously emotional experience. And it has been," he said.

Cox and Aniston also revealed that they've been watching reruns of the show just to catch up, and even that was a tear-jerking experience. "Laughed and cried," Cox said of their recent viewing, noting iconic moments like Ross and Rachel's first kiss. "That was so powerful."

PRODUCTION WAS PREVIOUSLY DELAYED.

Filming officially completed on April 10, 2021, Friends announced on Instagram, but production was meant to start much earlier.

The project was initially slated to film on March 23 and 24, 2020 in Burbank, but was "delayed until at least May," according to The Hollywood Reporter at the time.

Then, WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct-to-Consumer chairman Bob Greenblatt explained the desire to have the cast reunite in-person, rather than virtually. "We do think there’s a value to having a big, raucous live audience to experience these six great friends coming back together,” he said.

There were hopes that production would begin in the summer of 2020, but it was "pushed back indefinitely" due to the pandemic, according to Entertainment Weekly.

During a phone interview with Deadline, Jennifer Aniston reacted to the postponement and said, "It’s going to be super. You know what? This has also given us more time to make it even more exciting and more fun than it would have been. So I choose to see it as the glass is half-full that it got postponed. Look, we’re not going anywhere. You’re never going to get rid of Friends, sorry. You’re stuck with us for life guys."

"Unfortunately it’s very sad that we had to move it again," Aniston continued. "It was, ‘How do we do this with live audiences?’ This is not a safe time. Period. That’s the bottom line. It’s not a safe time to do it."

David Schwimmer had previously expressed his hope that the reunion would take place in 2020, as he told Entertainment Weekly, "We're hoping it will be able to convene and shoot it in August, but the truth is, we'll do it when we all determine it's safe to do so." He continued, "There's no question we want to do it and it's going to happen. It's just really a question of when will be the safest time to do it."

THE CAST WILL REPORTEDLY MAKE MILLIONS.

Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the stars negotiated their fees together and will be paid between $2.5 million and $3 million each for the reunion special. That's much more than the $1 million-per-episode rates they had when Friends was still running.

FANS CAN PARTICIPATE IN WATCH PARTIES THROUGH SCENER.

Starting May 27 at 12:01 a.m. PDT, viewers can watch the Friends reunion with their real-life friends through a virtual watch party on Scener. Users will need to create a profile at Scener and have an HBO Max subscription to watch.

YOU CAN WATCH FRIENDS EPISODES ON HBO MAX IN THE MEANTIME.

Friends is off Netflix, but the series—all 236 episodes of it—has found a new online home at HBO Max.

You Can The Friends Reunion Watch Online Here