Pitt looks back at fondly on his “Friends” guest appearance. “I remember it,” the actor told Access Hollywood. “It’s a great cast, man. I mean, they laugh and really have a great time with each other.” They also had patience for Pitt, who, despite his acting bona fides, took a minute to adjust to the sitcom. “But I flubbed my first line,” Pitt continued. “We had to stop and start again.”
Pitt’s cameo may have been tainted by the show’s inadvertent admission of his fame, but he’s not the only “Friends” guest star whose real-life celebrity interfered with their character. “Both Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis … both canonically exist in the ‘Friends’ universe,” pointed out u/RamenTheory, citing Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler’s (Matthew Perry) obsession with “Die Hard.” Willis later joined “Friends” as the father of Elizabeth, Ross’ Season 6 love interest. They continued, “but the characters never acknowledge Will nor Elizabeth’s dad as their celebrity lookalikes.” One fan pointed out Winona Ryder as another example; Ross puts the actress on his “celebrity freebie” list in Season 3, and she later appears as Rachel’s former sorority sister.
In “The One with the Rumor,” Will mentions that he’s about to appear in a subway sandwich ad following his weight loss. For one Redditor, that provided the justification for Pitt’s Season 4 magazine cover: “Maybe that’s just him making the front page as part of his subway sandwich commercial.”