Director James Burrows has opened up about some of the touching advice he imparted to the Friends cast early in their careers. The 81-year-old is well established for his work on some of the most iconic sitcoms of the 1990s, such as Cheers and Will & Grace, for which he was awarded numerous Emmy Awards. In 2016 Burrows also celebrated his 1,000th directorial credit for the NBC sitcom Crowded.
Launching on NBC in 1994 to become one of the biggest shows in the world, Friends was helmed by an assortment of talented filmmakers over the course of its 10 seasons. Arguably setting the tone for the show’s subsequent 236 episodes was Burrows, who had the enormous responsibility of directing the sitcom’s landmark pilot, “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate.” Returning to direct on further seasons of the show, Burrows’ close bond with Friends castmates Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer remains to this day. Praised by Aniston during the 2016 reunion special on NBC, the Emmy Award-winning actress said that she and her former co-stars would do anything for the man who offered them “the opportunity of a lifetime” and launched their careers.
Discussing his memoir, Directed by James Burrows, during an interview with AP, Burrows opened up about the advice he imparted to the young Friends cast upon leaving the show in 1998. Revealing that he’d told them to learn all they could from every director they worked with, Burrows also encouraged them to speak up if they disagreed with any creative decisions, adding that no one knew their characters better than they did. Explaining that he saw how gifted they all were even in their 20s, Burrows wanted to ensure they could express themselves before leaving as it would only improve the show’s material and increase their happiness. Check out his full comments below:
“They were all in their 20s and I just wanted to enable them to understand how gifted they all were and to be able to express what they thought about the piece with ensuing directors and the writers because they were all really creative. If an actor contributes, it only makes the show better and it only makes the actor happier to be part of the creative process. I tried to enable them to out there when I left the show and express themselves.”
Making his final contribution to Friends in 1998, helming the season 4 episode “The One with All the Rugby,” Burrows would refocus his attentions on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, which became one of the most successful shows featuring gay main characters to date. Particularly well known for his directorial work on pilot episodes, Burrows previously cited kindness as the key to promoting on-screen chemistry between new co-stars, revealing that he took the Friends cast to Las Vegas in order to help them form real familial bonds. Running for a further 6 seasons after his departure, the friendships nurtured under Burrows’ guidance have seemingly stood the test of time and continue to be credited with the global success of the show.
Warmly praised by Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, LeBlanc, and Schwimmer during NBC’s reunion special in 2016, it can be assumed that the 20-something-year-old cast of Friends took any advice from Burrows to heart. Though his words have probably helped in each of their future endeavors, it seems unlikely that the six former co-stars will ever know another character quite as well as they knew their Friends personas after ten years. Still, having gone on to enjoy lucrative solo careers of their own and continuing to reap the benefits of their Friends stardom over a decade later, Burrows certainly seems to be an authority worth listening to.
Source: AP