Letterman: Our first guest is one of the Friends of the popular television program, Friends. He can also be seen on a miniseries entitled Band of Brothers, premiering on HBO this Sunday. Here’s David Schwimmer. How ya doing?

DS: Good. How’re you doing?

Letterman: All right. How was your Labor Day weekend?

DS: Labor Day was very nice, actually. I was here. I spent a little time in the park, which was beautiful and, uh, I went, for the first time, actually, to the US Open. As you, as you talked about.

Letterman: That’s right, I guess.

DS: It’s unbelievable! Really -

Letterman: Are you, are you a tennis fan?

DS: Uh, not so much.

Letterman: This is a good one to see if you haven’t experienced it.

DS: And I had never seen a live match. And a buddy of mine - we had these amazing seats. We were right in the front row. We were like three feet away from Venus Williams last night, who, by the way, hot!! I mean, I had seen her on magazine and on TV, but she is beautiful, statuette, an incredible specimen of human potential and, uh, and, um, and, um, she was playing this incredible French woman, Sandrine (?), or whatever. Do you guys know who this is? Wow!

Letterman: Really?

DS: Uh, Sandrine, uh, I like to say Sandrine the Dream. And, uh, anyway, and, uh, there’s all this court etiquette I heard about and it’s true. You have to be really quiet and I didn’t realize the only thing you’re listening to, the only thing you’re hearing are these two champions, uh, like grunt. Yeah. Yeah. Y’know, it was like incredible, it was like, uh, (demonstrates). I found myself, uh, like, halfway during the match, like just closing my eyes and listening.

Letterman: Wow! I think that’s nice!

DS: I mean, it’s not every day that you hear two women groan like that, followed by applause.

Letterman: I guess not.

DS: I’m a fan now.

Letterman: Uh, let’s talk about, uh, they’re, they’re calling it the, uh, the television event of, of, of the year. I guess they’re calling it that.

DS: This appearance? Thank you!

Letterman: No, no, no. This is second! It’s a close second. Uh, Band of Brothers. Could you tell about your role in this and the experience?

DS: Uh, yeah, the experience was incredible. Uh, I play this guy, Captain Sobel (?) who was charged with, uh, with whipping, uh, these guys, these 18, 19, 20-year-old guys into shape.

Letterman: It was a true story?

DS: Yes. I play a real guy who was supposed to create the first parachute infantry of the US Army. We, we had never dropped men out of planes before. Uh, my character is kinda universally despised by the men. Uh, he was kinda petty and never really earned their respect. He was excellent at his job and a kind of hardass.

Letterman: What did you go about this story before you got into it, if, uh, if anything?

DS: Well, uh, uh, I thought a good deal about WWII. I had a lot of relatives who fought. My mother’s uncle and his five brothers all fought in the war, from, from New York and miraculously all five survived.

Letterman: That’s amazing.

DS: So, um, I knew - it was amazing. Reading the book, of course, helped. It focuses on this one company, ??? Company and it follows them through several years.

Letterman: Is it an enactment of the book?

DS: It really is. There are ten episodes, each an hour long and they focus on this one company and different individuals over the period of, uh, different episodes. And you really learn to understand and learn to love these, these men as they go -

Letterman: And as an actor, preparing for this role, did you go through that experience, could you identify with it, could you feel what it was like?

DS: As much as one can. And one thing they did that was helpful was send us all to boot camp for ten days beforehand. Uh, again, you can never approximate what all these guys went through. It was an incredible learning experience. For ten days you go to imagine, or pretend that you were in Basic Training. And I tell you, they beat the hell out of us. in fact, it was strange. You get out of a plane and you’re comfortable with a certain life and then you’re suddenly stripped of any kind of personal belongings and you’re not allowed to bring anything.

Letterman: So this is like the real deal.

DS: And you’re suddenly living with thirty other men in the barracks, on a base in the old countryside of England. And you suddenly find yourself acting, like you did when you were twelve, y’know, with a bunch of guys in camp. Actually, at one point, I injured my knee, just, uh, just in one of these training exercises and just to be safe, for an hour, they sent me to a doctor “off base”. When they heard about it, they were so excited that I was getting out for an hour, so they all came to with requests. Like, uh “can you get me -”, uh they had this shopping list of uh - I’m serious! Cigarettes, whiskey, chocolate bars, and y’know, magazines. Uh, it’s, and, uh, I was still making friends and I didn’t want to let anyone down so I say, sure. On the way to my doctor’s appointment, I see this little shop, this little tobacco shop and I pull over and I go in. And as any man knows, I’m not saying you do, uh as any young man knows, when you go in a shop for a magazine, you know, you check to make sure no one else is there. And luckily, no one else is in the shop. There’s this, like, eighty year old guy behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper, so, uh, I get my supplies: whiskey, cigarettes, chocolate, and then I say, I muster up the courage to say, “Good sir, do you have a, a, a Playboy?” And he said, “Great, sure, no problem” and I go “Do you have a Penthouse?” “No problem, anything else?” And, uh one weird guy in the barracks - and I’m not kidding you, and this is in England and they don’t have this magazine here - he had asked me to pick up Mothers In Law magazine. I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding! It’s about fifty pages of 50, 60, 70-year-old women, naked women, doing various household chores.

Letterman: Really?

DS: I’m not kidding! And they’re real mother in laws, with bios and everything and what part of England they’re from!

Letterman: So you might send in a photo of your mother in law, naked, vacuuming? You might? Yeah? Oh my!

DS: So I was, uh, I was uh, I had no idea about this magazine and I was a little nervous. And the show Friends is fairly popular in England. So um, I said “Kind sir, do you happen to have this, uh, Mothers In Law magazine?” He looked at me and, and he said (British accent) “Right here, right here.” I thank him, “That’ll be great,” and I’m gathering my things and right as, I swear to God, right as I’m walking out the door, he says, “By the way, I love your show, Ross.”

Letterman: Sure! Mothers in Law!

DS: Brutal. I’m just terrified of the headlines.

Letterman: So, anyway, the miniseries - you actually premiered it and debuted it -

DS: Oh. OH, uh, we had it in Normandy, on the beach where the men first landed on D-Day.

Letterman: Did the remaining, did the remaining members -

DS: Yeah, nearly all the veterans and their families were flown over and it was incredible. And just a privilege for me. And some of them hadn’t been on that beach for 57 years. I think it was very emotional for them and I -

Letterman: How did they respond to the miniseries? Had they seen all of it at that point or part of it?

DS: They had seen all of it, all the parts. And they were really honored and moved by all this effort and talent put into telling this story.

Letterman: This premieres Sunday on HBO and Friends is in its eighth season. Good for you!

DS: Thanks!

Letterman: Nice to see you again. David Schwimmer, everybody!