David Schwimmer Talks Up His Love For Chicago Theater

By Gwendolyn Purdom in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 17, 2016 9:54PM

Though he's still best known as divorce-prone paleontologist Ross Geller on Friends, David Schwimmer has played plenty of parts. And on a podcast interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week, the New York native who was raised in L.A. hopped back into his other signature role: Chicago fanboy.

Fresh off his second Emmy nomination (this time for playing Kardashian dad Robert in FX's The People v. O.J. Simpson, the first one was, duh, for Friends), Schwimmer told Scott Feinberg of the "Awards Chatter" podcast that Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre, which Schwimmer helped found, remains his "most stable artistic home."

Schwimmer graduated from Northwestern University in 1988 and initially moved out to L.A. to make some money he could funnel back into Lookingglass, he said on the podcast. Things didn't exactly work out that way. He commuted back and forth between the cities and waited tables for a while before nabbing his most famous role on "Friends" in 1994.

In the years since, Schwimmer has had the chance to give back to his theater and his adopted city in other ways. He's frequently appeared on stage at the Lookingglass, he directed the theater's company in the 1998 TV movie "Since You've Been Gone," and pulled a baller move last year when it was reported he contributed "a particularly timely large gift" to the Chicago History Museum and WFMT Radio's efforts to fund the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.

And if that's not evidence enough of the actor's Windy City devotion, how about this: He's the actual voice of The Bean. No, seriously.

We love you too, Ross, er, David.