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‘Friends’ star David Schwimmer broke silence on turning down a role in ‘Men in Black,’ and says his career would have panned out differently if he accepted the offer back in 1996 when the popular Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones movie entered production.

During Sony Music Entertainment’s podcast ‘Origins with Cush Jumbo,’ Schwimmer noted that he wanted to direct his first project rather than star in the classic 90s blockbuster.

“It was a brutal decision. I had just finished filming ‘The Pallbearer,’ my first film with Gwyneth Paltrow, and there were high expectations of that which didn’t come true,” Schwimmer said. “It was kind of a bomb but there were high expectations and the studio which was Miramax wanted to lock me into a three-picture deal at a fixed price and I said I would do that if I got to direct my first movie. So after months of negotiations, they finally said that I would act in three more movies for them but I got to direct my entire theatre company in the first film. All these unknown actors but I was going to put them on the map, basically. I was going to let everyone discover the talent of this amazing company.”

Schwimmer stands by his decision to tackle his own project:

“We found this amazing script and we were developing it. We started pre-production. All my best friends in the world in my theatre company quit their jobs so they could be in this film over the summer, which was going to be a six-week shoot in Chicago,” he said. “We’re in pre-production, hired the whole crew, everything’s going and that’s when I was offered ‘Men in Black.’ It was a direct conflict with this. My summer window from ‘Friends’ was four months. I had a four-month hiatus and ‘Men in Black’ was going to shoot exactly when I was going to direct this film with my company. And of course, it was an amazing opportunity. However, my theatre company and that relationship with all those people would probably have ended.”

‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ was Schwimmer’s directorial debut, which centered on a members of the class of 1987 coming together for a 10th-anniversary high school reunion. The film was intended to release theatrically by Miramax in 1997, but the film ended up premiering as a cable TV movie on ABC in 1998. The film was also met with poor reviews from critics and audiences.

“You have to follow your gut. You have to follow your heart,” Schwimmer continued. “Look, I’m really aware, whatever 20 years later maybe more, (‘Men In Black’) would have made me a movie star. If you look at the success of that film and that franchise, my career would have taken a very different trajectory.”

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