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'Friends' Cast Watch

Having Their Cake

Here's what the cast of ''Friends'' is up to this week. The gang shoots its 200th episode and sits for an oddball Annie Leibovitz portrait, and Courteney Cox tries to relax with a cold brew

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Here's what the cast of ''Friends'' is up to this week | 131554__friends_l

WINE-AND-CHEESY Azaria plays third wheel to Rudd and Kudrow on ''Friends'' 200th episode

Friends: Danny Field

All About

Friends

By Gary Susman

TIME FLIES ...when you're having fun starring on TV's top sitcom. ''Friends'' recently taped its 200th episode, which airs Thursday, and the cast celebrated with an enormous cake. ''It feels like we just had the celebration of the 100th like one minute ago,'' Jennifer Aniston told TV's ''Extra.'' On the show, Hank Azaria, playing a scientist who is Lisa Kudrow's occasional beau, returns to disrupt her budding romance with Paul Rudd; also, Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar (a.k.a. Freddie Prinze, Jr.) shows up to help Ross Geller and Rachel Green as the new nanny for baby Emma. At the on-set party, NBC entertainment President Jeff Zucker showed up to toast the cast by saying, ''Here's to 200 episodes and 200 more!'' You wish, Jeff.

CLOWNING AROUND Is this their way of saying they're tired of the media circus? The six Friends posed for a group portrait by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz for the December issue of Vanity Fair, though an advance copy of the photo showed up this week in Time magazine. The actors are posing in front of a ramshackle wooden shanty, and they're dressed as seedy, Depression-era circus performers. They certainly look depressed. If Leibovitz meant to show a different side of these familiar folks, she succeeded, since they're nearly unrecognizable as the cheery, caffeinated crew from Thursday nights. I mean, who knew David Schwimmer had such biceps?

STOUT HEARTS Here's why Courteney Cox and David Arquette may think twice before they invite a media crew into their home again. Salon.com reports that, after an interview with a BBC TV crew, Arquette went to pour himself a cold Guinness from the couple's keg-o-rator, which keeps their drafts at just the right temperature -- only to find that the clumsy Brits had accidentally unplugged it. ''It was ugly,'' the ''Eight Legged Freaks'' star said, ''but Courteney and I kept cool and immediately ordered up another keg.'' Eventually, they got the pint.