David Schwimmer Is Afraid of Almost Nothing (But Isn't a Huge Fan of Deep Water)

As a '90s nostalgia play, there's a subtle brilliance to the union of David Schwimmer and Goosebumps. Schwimmer, who catapulted to fame as a member of the cast of '90s phenomenon Friends, now stars in the latest TV series based on R.L. Stine's series of horror books, which rose to prominence in the same decade.

But in Goosebumps: The Vanishing, Schwimmer is in elder-statesman mode, He plays Anthony, a divorced dad whose two teenage children are visiting him in Brooklyn during summer vacation. (Crucially, this is Brooklyn as in Gravesend near Coney Island, not brownstone Brooklyn.) Anthony's own brother died mysteriously when he was a youngster, and the arrival of his spawn unleashes some old monstrosities.

Because Goosebumps is centered around fear, we decided to ask Schwimmer about what scares him. Turns out: Not much, but he is worried.

GQ: Going into this project, was there anything that scared you?

David Schwimmer: I don't think there was anything that scared me. I think the area that I was most, I guess, concerned about were some of the stunts. Nothing else was scary about it for me. It was just genuine excitement and fun, but on my mind was, "Okay, there's some serious stuff in here that I really want to make sure we figure out so that no one gets hurt. Especially me." I'm 58 now, so it's just a different body than when I was in my 20s on Friends or whatever. [Back then] I would just hurl myself across. I would still do it really safely. I would choreograph things. I would work on it. I would repeat things and make sure it was done safely—but I don't have the same body anymore, so I just want to make sure that whatever we do was really carefully choreographed. The stunt team was incredible on this. They were really, really great.

It's interesting you mention choreography. I saw an interview you did with Cush Jumbo where you said you were surprised that Matthew Perry praised your physical comedy, because you thought of that as mostly choreography.

I think that was the theater training that I had, which incorporated a lot of a combination of dance and sports and clowning. The way I started out as an actor was learning how to choreograph fight scenes, stage combat, all of that. So I kind of approached everything on that show as a dance. Also, so that you could repeat it over and over and over again take after take and do it safely.

In Goosebumps there's creepy, gooey vines that explode out of your skin. Did you tap into any personal phobias while doing this show?

I don't think I have any phobias. I mean, creepy-crawly things, if they're unrecognizable to me and really big, then that is definitely unnerving to me. Especially if you're out in the woods or camping. I used to camp a lot as a kid and everything, and you'd always come across stuff like, what is that? To be honest with you, I would say there are a couple of fears I have, right? One is that moment when you're out deep swimming in the ocean, and then you suddenly realize, "Oh, I have no idea what's underneath me. I just have no clue what's down there." That can mess with your head sometimes. And then I'm like, "You know what? I think I'm going to make my way back in, make my way back to shore." I've had moments like that.

And then my sister and I were actually—I don't know why I'm thinking about this, but since you're talking about fears—my sister and I were, actually as kids, young kids, like 8, 9 years old, were attacked by these large German Shepherds, and they were neighborhood dogs that got out, and it wasn't, I don't want to say traumatizing, but it was definitely scary. And then later when I was about 13, one of my best friend's dogs, this little dog, out of nowhere, just bit me on the cheek. The dog had always been a friend to me, so I think those two incidents have made me just cautious around dogs.

So safe to say you're not a dog person.

That's the irony. I'm totally a dog person. I love dogs. In fact, my mom just got a dog, a puppy. I'm in love with it, but I can't help—there's something that's kind of in my bones that immediately when I see a big dog that's not necessarily on a leash, immediately, instinctively, I brace.

Have you ever had fear of how one of your characters would be perceived? I actually have a specific example: Sobel in Band of Brothers is still, to this day, hated on the internet. Did you think: Is this guy going to be liked?

I think I've had that thought a couple of times. Sobel was one of them, right? The thing is, he's a real guy. He was a real person, so there was part of me that I knew that he was objectively disliked by all these men. Now, it's interesting because in the book, one of the reasons was because he was Jewish, and the training was in the deep South, it was in Georgia, and here's an urban Chicago Jew training a bunch of mostly Southern 17- and 18-year-olds. There was a dynamic there that I was led to believe was going to be even more dramatized in the show, and it kind of got watered down actually in the final version, but I thought that it was important to show that, actually, this existed and that dynamic was one of the reasons he was disliked.

And in spite of that, Sobel rose in the ranks and helped to create and make this company, Easy Company, one of the greatest companies, historically, that fought in World War II. So he's credited with something that I think what he did was noble and heroic even though he was pretty much despised. The other thing to me that was important about, or the concern about playing him was I really wanted people to know what happened to him. After the war, like so many veterans, he had mental-health struggles and he tried to take his life and failed. So to me, it was important that all of that try to be conveyed. Now, not all of that was conveyed to the audience, but that was my intention going into it: I'm going to try to honor and represent this guy as best I can.

What were the other times?

Boy, it's been a long time, but because I'm thinking of this movie I did, and now I'm having trouble even remembering the name of it—[ed note: It's called It's the Rage]—but I played Andre Braugher's lover, who was also, if I recall correctly, was also struggling with mental health and became, I think, if I remember correctly, became a killer. So I think there was some concern just about, for me, just kind of making sure everything in that movie was earned, felt like it was properly motivated and earned. But again, it's pretty vague. I feel like this was from 20, 25 years ago.

I was surprised how much grief is a theme in this Goosebumps series. Your character is dealing with the loss of his brother. How did you think about playing that?

I don't think I was even that conscious of this at the time of shooting, but now upon reflection and talking to you, I lost my dad in January.

I'm so sorry.

And he was my hero, and it was unexpected, and I'm still processing the grief. Everyone handles it differently depending on the situation and your story, but I think there was definitely something about this project and the opportunity to, I guess in a way, help me process that, which it did. I mean, again, I'm still processing, but as one grows older, as I have, and you lose people, you lose more people, you become more accustomed to grief, and it lives in you differently, and your relationship to it changes. But as an actor, you're also, I think, able to access it in a different way than perhaps I was when I was in my twenties.

In terms of career: Do you have different career fears than you did when you were starting out?

I'm laughing only because I have no career fears. I think I'm just at a stage in my life where there are more important things like being a parent, my friends, my family. I guess I don't have any more career fears. Then again, ask me when the next job happens. I don't know. Maybe there will be some fear. More than anything, I feel very grateful to still occasionally work. I'm very realistic about how harsh this business can be, and one day you're relevant, and one day you're not. And that's just the way it is. So I feel grateful that I occasionally get to pick and choose.

Do you get fearful or nervous when people bring up Friends?

Fearful? No. I don't get fearful of it. It's a strange and wonderful thing to be talking about something, a job that I got 30 years ago. It's amazing to me that this show still has legs among some audiences that people are discovering it, that I just went to Japan for the first time about six weeks ago, and this incredible tour guide that was with my buddy and I, at halfway through the thing she's like, "I just have to say, I learned English watching your show."

Honestly, it's a gift that keeps on giving. I mean, first it was an extraordinary gift to be cast, not only cast on that show, but work in that environment. It was a life-changing career experience, and personally. Then it provided financial security to make choices. And then my relationship changed with it again when my kids started watching it. Because I never mentioned it. Re-watching an episode with my own kid was kind of mind-blowing. It was just really special. So again, and now, and I mentioned meeting people who have learned the language from it, or the other thing that's really meaningful is meeting a parent, and this happens more often than I would like, but someone comes up to me and says that their kid is in hospital battling cancer, and the one thing that makes them smile is watching this show, and someone I've never met. So the idea that something that we created so long ago is still having an effect, a positive effect, on people is really meaningful. It's really cool.

What is it like working with the young actors on Goosebumps, who are around the age you were when you were on Friends?

I worked mostly with four of the actors, Jayden [Bartels] and Sam [McCarthy], who played my kids, and then Elijah [M. Cooper] and Stony [Blyden], those guys. I worked most with those guys. I was amazed at how talented, naturally talented, those young actors are and how professional they were for the most part, really took direction well.

The interesting thing was what happens off camera is that there's a big generation gap in that cut is called, everyone goes to their chairs or whatever, and you can, at any given point, you'll see the six or seven young actors sitting in a row or next to each other all on their phones or shooting Instagram or TikTok or whatever. I would say, honestly, that's the biggest difference. When I was their age on set, that was the time that you'd actually get to know people. You'd talk to other actors or in my case, I always wanted to direct, so I would use that time to talk to the crew, get to know what every person does on set and what their job is and what their background is. That's the main difference: Everyone's on their phone.

To conclude: Does that scare you?

It doesn't scare me. It makes me worried for the future. It makes me worried for my own kid and the future we're leaving these next generations. You mentioned Friends a bunch, and that was a world in which we didn't have phones, so we actually talked to each other, and I think it's a very different world now, and I think that's troubling.