While adopting a simian seemed like a good idea at the time, Marcel reaching sexual maturity became a real issue for Ross. After he started humping everything in sight, Ross was forced to surrender Marcel, entrusting his care to the San Diego Zoo. That wouldn’t be the last viewers saw of Marcel, though, and while his time as a Friend of Friends was short, he definitely left his mark on the series in more ways than one.
On camera, Marcel seemed to have a wonderful relationship with David Schwimmer who played Ross. However, off-screen it was a completely different tale according to Matthew Perry, who portrayed Chandler Bing. “Marcel was a monkey,” he recalled during an interview with me. “He had a trainer, who by the way had scratches all over his face.
“[The trainer] would yell instructions to the monkey while we were doing our scenes,” he continued. “So, the monkey would go up while we were trying to do our scenes. Eventually, the six of us said … ‘We are pretty good ... [nix] the monkey.’ It was David Schwimmer who actually asked that Marcel get the boot, as he had all the scenes with him, and Schwimmer was like, ‘I'd rather act with people.’”