After watching David Schwimmer play Ross Geller on “Friends” for 10 seasons, it’s hard to see him in any other role.
That’s one reason he is on a promotional tour as a filmmaker and not as an actor. Schwimmer’s first effort as a feature film director, “Run, Fatboy, Run” hits theaters Friday. He wants only to talk about directing the romantic comedy, which stars Simon Pegg.
“Run, Fatboy, Run” is about how far a guy will go to win back a lost love. In the movie, Pegg’s character runs a marathon to try to get his girlfriend to return.
When Schwimmer directed episodes of “Friends,” he didn’t have to hit the road to promote the popular NBC sitcom. But with this film, he has to travel to get the word out.
Neither the name “Schwimmer” nor the word “Friends” appears anywhere on the poster for “Run, Fatboy, Run,” and Schwimmer initially expressed ambivalence about using his star power to promote the movie.
“I have had countless talks with the distribution company out here, Picturehouse, who I really love, and my publicist, and my agent. Like, ‘What do I do? Is it my responsibility to get out there and be in front of the movie and publicize it?’ “
According to Pegg, who knew Schwimmer from starring with him in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” Schwimmer didn’t want to be up front for the film’s promotional push.
“David’s fairly timid in terms of the public side of his job,” Pegg said by phone from London. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that famous, really. He’s just sort of still wary of that aspect of his life.”
Now Schwimmer has made peace with his promotional responsibilities.
“I have to say, you should be so lucky,” he said. “The odds of getting an independent film made, and then getting it to [the] point where it is getting a release — you should be so lucky.”
Getting the film made took some work. It originally was supposed to be filmed in New York. Then “Run, Fatboy, Run” was bought by the British company Material Entertainment on the condition that it be translated into a London story. That meant production was moved to London, the same city where Ross married Emily in Season Four of “Friends.”
Suddenly, Schwimmer was directing a British comedy, with the bright talents Pegg and Dylan Moran, who starred in the BBC series “Black Books.”
Pegg, as a star and a scriptwriter, helped Schwimmer make the switch to the new locale. One of the conversations he and Pegg had concerned the differences between British and American humor.
“What we landed on was that for the most part, there is no difference. We both find the same things funny. There was very little we had to do translating the script to make it funnier,” Schwimmer said.
The move to the director’s chair is not permanent for Schwimmer. The New York native, who calls Jack Lemmon his greatest influence, likes acting too much.
He’s back to auditioning for roles, as he did in his early 20s when he wondered whether he ought to quit Hollywood and return to Chicago, where he’d co-founded Lookingglass Theater Company as a student at Northwestern.
Late last year, Schwimmer read for the Coen brothers, who were looking to cast the lead for their upcoming film, “A Serious Man,” which the Coens recently told the L.A. Times is “about a Jewish community in the Midwest in the 1960s.”
Schwimmer read for the lead, a college professor named Larry. “I think I knocked it out,” he said.
Schwimmer doesn’t know if he’ll be cast in “A Serious Man,” but the audition alone still meant something significant to him.
“Part of it was just being able to be in the room with two people I absolutely respect and would kill to work with.”
