David Schwimmer Agrees to Bring Stephen Colbert as His Date to SNL50

Move over, Ross and Rachel. The latest iconic duo just might be Ross and Stephen Colbert. Friends actor David Schwimmer has invited Colbert to be his guest at SNL’s upcoming anniversary special.

Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, Schwimmer explained that as a former Saturday Night Live host, he had received an invitation to the show’s upcoming 50th anniversary primetime special. Colbert, in turn, revealed he had not.

“I worked over there for a little bit, and no one invited me,” Colbert said. (Colbert spent some time writing with Robert Smigel in 1996, and loaned his voice to Smigel’s “Ambiguously Gay Duo” shorts.)

“You want to be my plus one?” Schwimmer asked Colbert.

An immediately convinced Colbert reached out his hand to Schwimmer, shaking on the arrangement. “I’ll go! That’ll be fun,” Colbert said.

Schwimmer and Colbert actually go way back. The two attended Northwestern University together and—as Colbert backed up with photo evidence during the interview—were in the same improv group, “The No Fun Mud Piranhas.”

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While it remains to be seen how genuine Schwimmer’s invitation to Colbert was, the Friends star has a bigger issue to figure out first: whether he himself was intentionally invited. Recounting his 1995 stint as SNL host, Schwimmer recalled getting an icy reception from the show’s crew due to a misunderstanding.

With Friends, which was then in its second season, taping episodes on Tuesday nights, the actor wasn’t able to arrive at SNL until Thursday morning. “When I walked into the writers room, the entire writing staff looked at me as if I had just slept with their mom or something,” he recalled. “They were not happy to see me, and I had no idea [why]. Somehow I got through the next two days, but I was kind of traumatized.”

It was only years later, when talking to another former SNL host, that Schwimmer learned the show expects hosts to show up on Mondays. The actor implied that his reps were to blame for the breach of protocol. With that history in mind, Schwimmer’s invitation to the anniversary celebration came as a surprise.

“It’s been 30 years… Maybe they forgot that they don’t like me, or it’s just some intern that’s tasked with emailing everyone who’s ever hosted,” Schwimmer reasoned, noting he’s hesitant about attending. “I don’t want to be like Charlie Brown with the football.”

The three-hour SNL50 Primetime Special airs on Sunday, February 16, from 8-11pm ET.

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