Actress Maggie Wheeler jumped back into the character as Janice from “Friends” to offer a fun musical take on the sitcom hitcom’s “One Mistake.”
Wheeler joined the singer-songwriter Jax to recreate the show’s theme tune – “I’ll Be There For You” by Rembrandts – from the perspective of her alter ego on screen, whose on-and-off relationship with Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing only ended forever when he stayed with Courteney Coxs Monica Geller.
The video begins with Jax, an “American Idol” alum who sings that “no one talks about the one mistake” on the show. Monica and Chandler, she says, “got along well, but I think Chandler should have ended up with someone else.”
Then Wheeler takes over as Janice – with her “Oh. My God.” catchphrase – and delivers these tongue-in-cheek lyrics:
Chandler, I’m waiting for you when you and Monica get divorced. I want to wait for you, you know you have always loved me more …
“You love me, Chandler Bing,” she finally declares with her character’s trademark laugh.
Jax shared the video to TikTok, where it has garnered more than 7 million views.
Wheeler appeared in 19 episodes of “Friends.” She has previously described how she came up with the character’s distinctive accent and kagl, saying in 2014 that Janice’s voice was inspired by audition notes about a “fast-talking New Yorker”.
“I grew up there and I just know those people and I just interpreted the character that I had imagined she would be,” she explained.
The laughter happened “organically in the first test,” she told Australian television in 2016.
“I needed to find a way to laugh because Matthew Perry is so funny. And when I worked with him, I knew right away that I was thinking, ‘This guy is going to make me laugh on the set, I’m must be prepared. What should I do? ‘”she said.” So I created Janice’s laugh just as a precaution when Matthew made me laugh. “
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