Hence my yearslong inner dialogue with a famous actor I had never met.Īs a child growing up in eastern Pennsylvania, I considered my aunt to be the coolest adult I knew. She even named one of her cats Rupert because apparently David would use that first name when checking into hotels. Though she worked with many celebrities, her friends told me she had a special affinity for David Schwimmer.

I always thought it would have made my aunt laugh. When the lights go out and the black light comes on, his teeth practically illuminate the room. The episode is called “The One With Ross’s Teeth,” in which Ross over-whitens his teeth and ends up on a date with a woman who has a black light. Because she died before the internet was a part of our daily lives, this dedication is one of the first things that comes up when you search for her name, her whole life distilled into one question: “Who was Gail Joseph on ‘Friends’?” When she died by suicide at 39 in November 1999, an episode of “Friends” was dedicated to her. My father’s younger sister Gail was a comedy division manager at NBC, where she worked with the casts of “Friends,” “Will and Grace,” “Blossom” and other shows. What if a real-life conversation didn’t measure up? Was it worth the risk? As strange as it sounds, there was a lot at stake. In my head, David Schwimmer always said exactly the right thing. It wasn’t until I found myself there several weeks later that the panic set in. Without giving it enough thought, I registered for the conference and booked my flight from Boston to New York. When I found out he was going to be speaking at a conference I could plausibly convince my boss to send me to, I wondered if this might finally be my chance to have that conversation in real life. I had been having a conversation in my head with David Schwimmer, who played Ross on the TV show “Friends,” for more than 10 years.

Story of i too had a love story