So...HBO (or whoever) announced that the reunion special that was filmed within the last couple months will be airing on May 27 on HBO Max (no idea if or where it will air outside the U.S.). Yay! HOWEVER, they announced this list of "guest stars":
Some of these folks are important recurring cast members (Elliott Gould and Christina Pickles as Ross and Monica's parents, Tom Selleck as one of Monica's early love interests, James Michael Tyler as Gunther from Central Perk, and Maggie Wheeler as Chandler's on-again-off-again girlfriend Janice).
A couple of these are lesser guest stars (Larry Hankin as a downstairs neighbor from the first few seasons, Thomas Lennon as a blackjack dealer from the Vegas episodes, and Reese Witherspoon as one of Rachel's sisters). Lennon is a bit of an odd choice among all of the major names who showed up in Friends at some point (many before they became big names), but he was in The Odd Couple with Matthew Perry, so maybe that's why.
The rest of these names had NOTHING at all to do with friends. When this list was released, I had no idea who/what BTS, Cara Delevingne and Malala Yousafzai were. I've since learned that, supposedly, one of the guys in BTS learned English by watching Friends reruns, and a couple of the others have publicly commented about being Friends fans. I'm just a bit miffed since every second of screen time we get hearing about how Kit Harington binged Friends during breaks from Game of Thrones (or whatever) is a second that we don't get to hear from the folks actually involved with the show.
I know a lot of folks somehow only learned recently that this reunion isn't a scripted episode (even though that's been publicly known ever since this was announced back in early 2020 or whenever it was) and are bummed about that. I'm fine with that, but this "guest" list makes me look forward to the reunion a bit less than I otherwise would, and I really hope they don't turn this into "celebrities fawning over the Friends cast."
We shall see.