Friends Episode With Julia Roberts May 2026

Roberts plays Susie Moss, a childhood classmate of Chandler Bing’s. The set-up is classic sitcom irony: Chandler, the king of sarcasm, once played a cruel prank on Susie in the fourth grade, humiliating her by pulling up her skirt and revealing her underpants to the entire school. Now, years later, Susie has transformed from a bespectacled, awkward girl into a glamorous movie star (a wink to Roberts’s own real-life stardom). Chandler, unaware of her identity, is immediately smitten. The genius of the episode lies in the tension between Chandler’s present-day desperation to impress a beautiful woman and Susie’s long-simmering, meticulously planned revenge.

“The One After the Super Bowl” is not a subtle episode. Its humor is broad, its pacing frantic, and its B-plot involving a lost monkey and Jean-Claude Van Damme is pure silliness. But within that commercial, high-pressure environment—designed to capture the largest possible audience after the Super Bowl—Roberts and the writers delivered a perfect miniature revenge comedy. The episode endures not just for the nostalgia of a megastar visiting Central Perk, but for its smart, feminist twist on the humiliation narrative. Susie “Underpants” Moss walks away having won, proving that sometimes the most devastating weapon against a sarcastic man is a patient, clever woman who remembers exactly what he did. And for Chandler Bing, the lesson is clear: be careful who you mock in the fourth grade—she might just grow up to be Julia Roberts. friends episode with julia roberts

This narrative choice elevates the episode beyond a simple “star cameo.” It reverses the typical power dynamic of the sitcom. Normally, Chandler is the observer, the one who verbally deconstructs everyone else’s awkwardness. Here, he becomes the spectacle. Susie doesn’t just beat him at his own game; she changes the rules entirely, using her Hollywood glamour as bait for her petty, righteous vengeance. The episode smartly comments on the nature of celebrity: Susie’s fame is her camouflage. Chandler, blinded by her status, fails to see the angry, clever girl beneath the designer dress. He assumes a star would never remember a childhood slight, and that assumption is his downfall. Roberts plays Susie Moss, a childhood classmate of