Friends' monkey handler defends Marcel from David Schwimmer, calls human actor "jealous"
The handler adds that Schwimmer's disrespect for the deceased monkey actor is "despicable"
David Schwimmer is in a feud with two monkeys and the human who loves them, whether he likes it or not. After enduring years of shit-talking from Schwimmer about the pair of capuchin monkeys who portrayed Friends’ star-player, Marcel The Monkey, the guy responsible for training them has gone to The Sun in order to set the record straight and elevate the interspecies beef in the process.
Likely egged on by the fact that Marcel’s actors were not paid an exorbitant fee to chitter, scream, and hop up and down as the hosts of the Friends reunion, handler Mike Morris has responded to the latest instance of simian slander during the reunion special by—as The Sun puts it—“speaking out for the first time ever” about the long-standing feud.
Responding to Schwimmer’s accusations that Katie and the unimaginatively named Monkey, the capuchin thespians in question, would attempt to bite him, throw their shit around, leave half-eaten meal worms on him, and mess with his timing, Morris has said, “They didn’t do any of that. None of it is true.”
Morris says he only heard that the monkeys were further disparaged during the reunion secondhand since he has “never ever watched Friends because of Schwimmer’s comments about the monkeys” and he wasn’t about to start now. He says the first shoots were fine but that “people would laugh at the monkey and I think [Schwimmer] got jealous because it wasn’t him getting the laughs.”