Marcel's trainer says David Schwimmer was "jealous" of his Friends monkey co-star
Animal handler Mike Morris has spoken about the monkey's relationship with the Ross Geller star.
During last month's long-awaited Friends reunion episode, David Schwimmer commented that he didn't enjoy working with the monkeys on the hit sitcom – and now the animals' trainer has had his say.
After Schwimmer said the monkeys who played Marcel often messed up his comic timing, animal handler Mike Morris has leapt to the defence of the primates, even claiming the Ross Geller actor was "jealous" that Marcel got more laughs than him.
Speaking to The Sun, Morris said that, of all the actors the monkeys had worked with on the show, it was only Schwimmer who had a problem.
And he went on to launch something of a tirade against the star, going so far as to say that he had never even watched an episode of Friends because he was so stung by Schwimmer's frequent comments about Marcel – who was played by two different capuchins called Katie and Monkey.
During the Friends reunion, Schwimmer said: "I love animals. I love primates. I have nothing against animals, I'm an animal lover. However, here was my problem: the monkey — obviously, it was trained and it had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time— but 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'd have to reset, we'd have to go again because the monkey didn't get it right."
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On the most recent comments, he added, "Of course, I didn’t watch the reunion interview but I heard from others what Schwimmer said. I just don’t agree with it, if anything he threw off their timing, if we want to be truthful.
"Schwimmer was fine with the monkeys for the first couple of episodes and happy to be there. But people would laugh at the monkey and I think he got jealous because it wasn’t him getting the laughs."
And the criticism didn't stop there, with Morris continuing, "He seemed to get a little bitter about them being there after that. And of course the monkeys didn’t like working with him after he turned on them."
"My colleague who also worked on the show says that people would laugh at the monkey and throw Schwimmer off," he added.
Morris claimed it got to the point where "[Schwimmer] just really resented the monkey being there" and said that the comments were all the worse because one of the capuchins had recently passed away.
"Schwimmer was talking ill of the dead when he made those comments," he said. "I find it despicable for him to still be speaking ill of her."
RadioTimes.com has approached a representative for Schwimmer asking for comment.
Friends: The Reunion is available to stream on NOW and all 10 series of Friends are available on Netflix. To find out what else is on, check out our TV Guide.
