(NOTE LANGUAGE) While there were many talked-about moments about HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion Special — like the reveal of David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston‘s IRL unrequited romance — a blink-and-you-missed-it shot of Paul Rudd still has people buzzing.
Rudd played sweetheart Mike Hannigan on the show, a love interest of Lisa Kudrow‘s Phoebe Buffay. And while the actor wasn’t among the guests at the reunion, Rudd could be seen kneeling and filming his assembled co-stars on his trusty camcorder.
But because the special cut back and forth from the past to the present — and because Paul Rudd apparently doesn’t age — people mistakenly thought he was filming the reunion with the retro tech. A tweet Friday morning showing the moment got more than 2,000 likes in a matter of hours.
For the record, the actor was actually filming the finale of the show in 2004 — but more than a few were fooled.
“Paul Rudd like Amy Poehler in Mean Girls,” one poster noted Friday, adding a gif of Amy’s “cool mom” juggling her own camera.
Another person forcefully defended Rudd’s right to privacy: “Whoever took this photo needs to stay the f*** out of his business.”
All told, the social media analysts at Talkwalker tell ABC Audio that there have been 267,000 mentions of the reunion in the past 48 hours alone, and counting.
In the past week, there have been some 30,500 people posting about the get-together, with the real-life ‘Ross and Rachel’ romance among the most popular topics.
As previously reported, Talkwalker said there were 7.4 billion engagements — that’s mentions, likes and shares — across social media platforms in the days leading up to the special, and 2.8 billion specific mentions before the reunion debuted in the U.S. on Thursday.
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