Matt LeBlanc Explains Why The 'Friends' Meat Trifle Scene Was Way Grosser Than It Looked

Friends was a long-running sitcom with a great cast and a lot of funny moments, and one of its highest points was the infamous "meat trifle" incident where Jennifer Aniston's character, Rachel, made a terrible Thanksgiving dessert for all her friends. Watching the whole cast devour her terrible dessert to spare her feelings was funny, but also a little gross. And now Matt LeBlanc revealed in a recent interview that it was actually even more disgusting than it looked on television.

In the episode, Rachel decides to make Thanksgiving dessert, despite the fact that she is a terrible cook. In the end, she makes an astoundingly terrible dish when the pages of her cookbook got stuck together, leading her to bake a dish that was half a traditional British fruit trifle and half Shepherd's pie. It was made of whipped cream, jam, ground beef, onions, and peas. And one of the funniest moments is when Matt LeBlanc's character, Joey, continues eating it after she left the room and declares that he thinks it's great.

"Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good!" he says. "What's not to like?"

It was an iconic scene. But according to Today, in a recent interview on The Graham Norton Show, LeBlanc explained that while the episode was filming, the cast was actually eating plates of whipped cream and bananas. LeBlanc was sitting next to David Schwimmer, who spit a whole mouthful of whipped cream back onto his plate between takes. LeBlanc told Norton he didn't notice, and scooped the leftovers from Schwimmer's plate onto his own. The he unwittingly proceeded to eat the whole plate of Schwimmer's regurgitated whipped cream in the next take.

"There was too much on his plate," LeBlanc recalled. "So he starts to eat it all and he can't finish it and he starts laughing, so we cut. As we're cutting, he kind of spits it back on his plate. I'm sitting right next to him, and I'm looking the other way. I didn't see him spit it back on his plate."

According to LeBlanc, nobody on set stopped him or told him what had happened. He found out about it while watching a blooper reel later. That's enough to put anybody off trifles forever, but it was still one of the most memorable Thanksgiving moments on Friends.