Remember “The One with the Routine,” the episode when Friends’ sweetest siblings Monica and Ross Geller stuck the landing in their groovy and goofy dance number? That was all the work of The Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin, who was tasked with creating a “silly, fun, trying way too hard, over the top” routine for Courtney Cox and David Schwimmer’s characters, according to her interview with Vanity Fair.
In the memorable season six episode of the seminal sitcom, the Geller duo try to get the coveted spotlight while taping Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with “the Routine” from their middle school days. It’s a blast from the past with the definitive dance moves of the 1980 decade thrown together in a discordant mash-up — the cabbage patch, the wave, Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, the running man, the snake and more.
The helter-skelter choreography embraced by Cox and Schwimmer purposefully prove cramming the tasteful moves of the time results in a distasteful concoction, but Antin still applauds the two actors for pulling off the comedic, chaotic affair. “Every single movie I showed them, they were able to do it,” she said. “I swear to God. I was like, ‘Oh my God, how can you know how to do this?’”
Cox even improvised some finishing touches to “the Routine,” like counting “Five, six, seven, eight!” while snapping. “It was really, really good because they knew exactly what they were doing,” Antin said about the filmed performance she witnessed. “It was one of the most funny and fun days I think I’ve ever had in any of my experiences as a choreographer. It was just… it was wild.”
It wasn’t the only time Antin choreographed a scene in Friends: She worked with Danny DeVito when he guest starred as a stripper for Phoebe’s bachelorette party in the tenth season. DeVito took directions so well (“You tell me what to do. I got it,” Antin recalled) that he had the whole room cracking up after filming. “It was so unbelievably fucking hilarious,” she noted.