James Michael Tyler, Gunther the Central Perk Barista on ‘Friends,’ Dies at 59
James Michael Tyler, who portrayed the disregarded Central Perk barista Gunther on all 10 seasons of Friends, has died after a fight with prostate most cancers. He used to be 59.
Tyler died Sunday morning at his home in Los Angeles, confirmed his longtime buddy and supervisor Toni Benson, who described him as any individual who loved dwell song and the Clemson Tigers. “In the event you met him whenever you made a buddy for lifestyles,” Benson wrote in a tribute emailed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Friends co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane paid tribute to the actor as effectively.
“James used to be a in point of fact variety, sweet man,” they acknowledged in a joint observation. “When he started as an additional on Friends, his distinctive spirit caught our witness and we knew we needed to form him a persona. He made Gunther’s unrequited love extremely relatable. Our coronary heart goes out to his valuable other, Jennifer Carno.”
Friends star Jennifer Aniston posted a clip on Instagram the attach Gunther tells her persona, Rachel, that he’s in love alongside with her. In the caption, she wrote: “Friends do now now not had been the identical without you. Thank you for the laughter you dropped at the indicate and to all of our lives. You’re going to be so missed.”
Tyler announced on the On the present time indicate in June that he had stage 4 prostate most cancers that had unfold to his bones; he acknowledged he used to be first diagnosed in September 2018 all the plan via a routine physical.
“My aim this past yr used to be to private a examine my 59th birthday. I did that,” he acknowledged. “My aim now [by revealed his illness and advocating for checkups] is to now now not lower than set apart one lifestyles.”
He shared his anecdote to support those with a prostate to receive a most important PSA blood take a look at as early as 40 years feeble.
Tyler used to be working as a barista at the Bourgeois Pig espresso store on Franklin Avenue terminate to Hollywood when he used to be asked to stand in the background and work the levers of the Central Perk espresso machine on the NBC sitcom.
It took him two seasons and 33 appearances sooner than he purchased his first line of debate and for his persona to receive a name, in accordance with Saul Austerlitz’s 2019 guide, Technology Friends: An Inner Appreciate at the Indicate That Outlined a Television Generation.
Tyler would indicate up on 150 of the 236 episodes of the indicate, from the 2nd installment that first aired in September 1994 to “The Closing One” on Also can impartial 6, 2004. No other actor recurred extra customarily.
Gunther, a peroxide blonde, once used to be a soap actor on All My Kids, but his persona used to be killed off in an avalanche, resulting in his gig at Central Perk. He pines for Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) for years but does now now not indicate his correct emotions to her unless the sequence finale; off to Paris, she tells him she’ll judge him at any time when she sees any individual “with hair brighter than the solar.”
In his guide, Austerlitz eminent that Gunther “served as an ongoing running shaggy dog anecdote for the indicate, the outsider whose perpetually foiled makes an attempt at penetrating the internal circle emphasised the charmed station of the sextet.
“He used to be background color for Friends, latest at the characters’ occasions and gatherings, lurking over their shoulders as they sipped espresso at Central Perk. He used to be there to be now now not eminent and lost sight of, forgotten and brought with out a consideration.”
Tyler regrettably used to be on the skin again when he reconnected — but handiest by potential of Zoom — with Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc on the Friends HBO Max reunion particular that premiered in Also can impartial 2021.
He acknowledged it used to be his decision now now not to seem in individual. “I didn’t wanna bring a downer on it, you respect?” he acknowledged.
The youngest of 5 children, Tyler used to be born on Also can impartial 28, 1962, in Winona, Mississippi. After his father, a retired Air Power captain, died when he used to be 10 and his mom, a homemaker, died when he used to be 11, he went to dwell alongside with his sister in Anderson, South Carolina.
He acted in pupil performs at Clemson University, the attach he graduated with a stage in geology in 1984, then got a master’s in elegant arts from the University of Georgia three years later.
He moved to Los Angeles in 1988, sold keyboards at a Guitar Heart and worked as a producing assistant on the Paul Newman-starring Corpulent Man and Microscopic Boy (1989) and at the Bourgeois Pig sooner than landing on Friends.
Later, he appeared on such reveals as Moral Shoot Me!, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Scrubs, Novel Music and, as himself in 2012, on LeBlanc’s Episodes.
In 2009 and 2014, he noteworthy Friends anniversaries by standing in the succor of the counter of Central Perk replicas.
Whereas present process remedy, Tyler persisted to construct and starred in two immediate films — The Gesture and the Observe and Processing — which earned him accolades at various film gala’s. Earlier this yr, his spoken-observe efficiency of Stephen Kalinich’s poem “If You Knew” used to be tailored accurate into a transient video to raise consciousness for the Prostate Most cancers Basis.
Survivors encompass his 2nd valuable other, script coordinator Jennifer Carno.