There were quite a few contenders for the unofficial seventh friend position on Friends.
First, there was Janice, who had that delightfully irritating phrase that popped throughout the
whole series.
"Janice?"
"Oh.
My.
God."
And Mike Hannigan actually married into the crew late in the show.
"This is my husband Crap Bag."
But James Michael Tyler's bright-haired barista Gunther was definitely the closest thing to
a full-fledged member of the Central Perk Crew.
Sure, we didn't get to learn much about him …
"What's my last name?"
"Central Perk?"
Thanks to his unrequited obsession with Rachel, though, Tyler was the most consistent guest
star of the series and held his coffee-shilling role for all 10 seasons.
So, what's happened to the man who played Gunther since the Friends vacated the coffee
house?
Let's take a look at what James Michael Tyler has been up to and why we might not hear of
him very much these days.
The one with the accidental casting
While most of the Friends cast members' careers were still relatively new by the time they
signed onto the show, they each still had a pretty legitimate history in the biz before
they got their roles.
However, Tyler was merely an extra trying to get a free meal when he accidentally nabbed
his part as the coffeehouse guy who happened to become something more.
Tyler originally got the gig because he was the only one of the extras who actually knew
how to work the complicated cafe machinery that was provided as a prop.
He later joked,
"I honestly always thought my masters in fine arts would get me further in the acting world
than knowing how to work an espresso machine!
That was a happy accident and I'm very, very grateful to have had that skill."
His character didn't speak for the entire first season, but once the showrunners learned
of his training, they started to incorporate his character more and more.
After that, he became a series mainstay, with brief but hilariously memorable moments scattered
throughout.
"Oh, Dark Mother once I again I suckle at your smoky teet."
"No no, why don't you hold onto that one."
The one with the career slowdown
Most of the Friends have gone on to do other things since turning in their keys to Apartment
20, but Tyler has had a hard time finding work outside of Central Perk.
Among his few credits, he's had cameo roles in shows like Scrubs, but overall, he's had
little luck turning his Gunther gusto into something long-term.
Perhaps the multitude of residuals from Friends has made it so that Tyler simply doesn't have
to work to get by, but he's still been trying to land new gigs nonetheless, including writing
his own screenplay and hosting a series of digital author interviews.
Even those acting roles he has gotten since Friends have been mostly connected to his
status as Gunther.
In 2006, he was part of a failed TV pilot called Nobody's Watching in which two TV megafans
try to start their own sitcom with Warner Bros., where he made a cameo as himself.
"I can imagine this is what Hell is like."
He also played himself in Matt LeBlanc's hit showtime series Episodes, in which he boasted
about remaining friendly with his former co-stars.
"I still see Schwimmer and Courteney and I text all the time."
"Really? Jen too?"
"Yeah, I housesit for her when she's in New York."
While he was playing his real-life self in that scene, that quote was certainly a work
of fiction.
He admitted to MovieWeb,
"I live in Los Angeles, so I will see them in passing a lot of times."
"It's either that, or passing them in traffic.
It's just because people have different lives and have gone in different directions now."
The one with all the nostalgia
Another bit of happenstance that worked in Tyler's favor when it came to Friends was
the fact that while he was not naturally blonde, one of his friends decided to play guinea
pig on his hair just before the show's taping and turned his locks white.
No word on whether his pal ever made it as a stylist, but for Tyler, the producers ended
up loving the look, so he spent the next decade dying his hair to keep it consistent.
"I wanted to be 'The Gunther' [hairstyle] you know they had 'The Rachel,' I always wondered
why 'The Gunther' never caught on."
With the exception of the 20th anniversary celebration in which he helped open a Friends
pop-up coffee shop in London to celebrate the show, Tyler hasn't kept the bleached look
going since the hit series came to a close.
Even still, Tyler has been the go-to when it comes to Warner Bros.' throwback publicity
tours, and he's been happy to wax nostalgic on social media from time to time as well.
One star of his Twitter account?
A cat named Cubby, who he first found under the iconic orange couch.
He's kept the cat as his own pet ever since.
It may not be the same show-quality sphinx cat he adopted from Rachel …
"So what is this some kinda snake or something?"
But it's a clear metaphor for the fact that Tyler definitely took his role as Gunther
home with him after Friends was finished.
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