Courteney Cox Is Filming ‘Shining Vale’ Where She Filmed ‘Friends’ and Her Biggest Complaint Hasn’t Changed
Courteney Cox is still reliving her Friends days long after she filmed the HBO Max reunion special. Cox now filming her new Starz show, Shining Vale. The horror-comedy films on the Warner Bros. studio lot where Friends filmed in the ’90s. Shining Vale even uses the same stage.
Cox was on a Television Critics Association panel for Shining Vale on Aug. 19. Sitting with her cast and crew on the Warner Bros. set, Cox described returning to the stage, which still has the same problems as before. Shining Vale is coming in 2022 to Starz.
Courteney Cox returned to her ‘Friends’ stage to film ‘Shining Vale’
In Shining Vale, the Phelps family move into a haunted house when Terry (Greg Kinnear) buys it for a steal. Pat Phelps (Cox) experiences the most supernatural occurrences and has to convince her family she’s not imagining it. One of the house’s scary locations is the same one where Friends began.
“So we were on Stage 5,” Cox said. “That’s where the attic is in the show and I remember being on that stage, the dressing rooms were really small. I don’t think we even spent time in there. There was one bathroom that we all had to share, I think, including the crew. So we didn’t stay on that stage very long.”
‘Friends’ eventually got a better stage
Fortunately, Friends became an instant ratings smash. All six of the cast members became celebrities. So, the show got to move to a bigger stage with better accommodations.
“We moved to [stage] 24 but no, I didn’t have the same [dressing] room, although I might,” Cox said. “That might be my holding area. And I say holding because it’s really pretty gross.”
Courteney Cox reveals the rooms around Stage 5 might have had another use
The more Cox thought about the good old days on Warner Bros. Stage 5, she recalled what else the Friends cast did behind the scenes.
“I don’t know, that was so many years ago because we moved to 24,” Cox said. “It may have been the room that we all played poker in. That’s what I kind of think it was. That’s where I am in now on Stage 5.”
Production on Shining Vale is underway, so most of the cast spend their time on the set working. Cox said she hasn’t given any tours of the set yet, but she got the idea that that could be good social media content.
“I have not taken them around,” Cox said. “I will take them. That’s a good idea. I’ve loved having these little posts to do here because it’s all about the ‘Gram isn’t it? Okay, so that’s something we can do during lunch today.”
Some ‘Friends’ have already seen ‘Shining Vale’
Television critics aren’t the only people who’ve seen Shining Vale this early. Cox said she showed some of her Friends co-stars, but even the first episode was too scary for them.
“I showed Lisa [Kudrow] and Jennifer [Aniston], and they were so scared,” Cox said. “They couldn’t watch. But Lisa has never seen anything, like no Screams, nothing. She’s petrified of everything. I don’t know if you saw the reunion. She was scared of a spider. That was like one of the best laughs in the whole show.”
