The trainer of Marcel the money from Friends has come forward to speak out against David Schwimmer’s harsh comments at the recent TV show reunion.
Friends has become one of those shows guaranteed to be repeating on one TV channel of another at any one time. Inevitably, there was quite a hype about the show’s long-awaited reunion special.
During a Q&A segment of this reunion, David Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller, complained about ‘the monkey’ and labelled the animal as his least favourite aspect of the show.
Schwimmer alleged that the monkey would sabotage takes, and wipe their dirty hands on him after eating live bugs.
The actor exclaimed: ‘I would have monkey grubby hands all over. It was time for Marcel to f*** off!’
Mike Morris, who trained the two capuchin moneys who played Marcel, took to The Sun to air his rant against Schwimmer’s comments, calling him ‘despicable’ for speaking against working with the animals.
‘Schwimmer was fine with the monkeys for the first couple of episodes and happy to be there,’ the trainer argued. ‘But people would laugh at the monkey and I think he got jealous because it wasn’t him getting the laughs.’
‘He’s not the kind of actor who can improvise,’ Morris added. ‘It got to the point where he just really resented the monkey being there, he obviously had a problem with her and he’s still talking about it now.’
Marcel was played by two different monkeys called Katie and Monkey. Sadly, Monkey passed away from cancer earlier this year.
Morris accused David of talking ill of the dead, and ended that he found it ‘despicable for him to still be speaking ill of her’.
The character Marcel the money first appeared in the first season of friends, but departed once reaching sexual maturity, having been accepted by San Diego Zoo.
Read more about the Friends reunion here.