It's easy to forget that celebrities not only have lives just like regular people when they're outside a recording studio, but that there was a time before they became a famous performer.
In the years before "David Schwimmer" became synonymous with "Ross from Friends," he was a freshman at the university he attended and looking for a job like every other broke college student.
Fortunately for the Goosebumps: The Vanishing actor, his mother was a divorce lawyer in need of an assistant. Knowing he needed a job, she offered for him to be a process server.
Schwimmer reflected with on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert:
"One summer after my freshman year in college, I was just looking for work, and my mom said, 'Well, you can be a process server for me.' My mom was a divorce lawyer, and I was the guy who would pop out of the bushes and serve you divorce papers."
"So, at the time I was 18, and [I felt like] James Bond! I was not James Bond, but I was tipped off as to where they might be."
But what was funny for the then-18-year-old were the celebrity run-ins he occasionally had.
"Once... Oh man, thank goodness I've never run into him since, but... I served Rod Stewart."
"I don't even know if he knows, I don't think he knows, but he knows now!"
Stephen Colbert quipped:
"Change your locks, man. He's vengeful. You could theoretically run into Rod Stewart sometime and now he knows to punch you!"
Schwimmer did not reveal the details of serving the papers to Stewart, but since he would have been 18 in 1984, it stands to reason that he was serving papers for separation from his then-wife Alana Stewart, since they divorced later in that year.
You can watch the interview here:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Viewers found the interview to be comedic and nostalgic, especially fans of Friends. A common thread throughout the show was how Schwimmer's Ross Geller got divorced "all the time," as he experienced three divorces within the ten-year timeline.
In Season 9, Episode 16 of Friends, "The One with the Boob Job," Ross even nicknames himself "The Divorcer" and then "Ross: The Divorce Force" while talking about how much he loved marriage despite his frequent departures from it.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube
After divorcing from Alana Stewart in 1984, Rod Stewart went on to marry Rachel Hunter from 1990 to 2006, and is still married to Penny Lancaster after marrying her in 2007.
With a twenty-year buffer between then and now, the singer might even find it funny to discover that he had been served his first round of divorce papers by someone who would later be jokingly referred to as "The Divorce Force."