Did Courteney Cox Put a Raw Turkey on Her Head for the Iconic Friends Scene With the Late Matthew Perry?

Courteney Cox has countless iconic moments from her decade playing Monica on Friends — but the one that haunts her online (particularly at this time of year) is the one of her dancing with a turkey on her head to make Chandler laugh. But was it real?

In our third-favorite Friends Thanksgiving episode, The One With All the Thanksgivings, Cox’s character Monica Gellar infamously wears a turkey over her head with sunglasses and a hat and dances for the late Matthew Perry’s character Chandler Bing in order to ask for forgiveness.

The show’s producer David Crane noted that the turkey Cox wore on her head — which was also worn by Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani earlier in the episode — was fake.

“That is absolutely not a real turkey. I think there are so many health issues about actually putting a turkey on someone’s head,” Crane told Entertainment Weekly in 2016.

Director Kevin S. Bright chimed in, “It’s meat, it would need to be refrigerated between takes, and it’s going to be under hot lights — you’re going to put that on Courteney Cox’s head? I don’t really think so.”

While writer Greg Malins noted to EW that he had wanted “a real turkey,” just because “I wanted Matt to have to put his head into a turkey,” the prop department was not able to find a way to make it happen.

“The biggest turkey ever for sale is not big enough to fit a human head. I remember them coming to us and saying, ‘We have to build it.’ So we made it out of foam,” Marlins said.

“So we had a very expensive turkey made…” Bright added. “There were vents, and it had mesh so Courteney and Matt could see out of it.”

Years later Cox decided to recreate the scene in an Instagram video in 2020 — this time with a real turkey. And as it turns out the prop department was onto something, as she ended up showing “the (gross) truth” of actually wearing a turkey on one’s head.

In the video, which started off with the words “Vegan Discretion Advised,” Cox is seen wearing plastic wrap over her face with a towel on her head as she undertook multiple attempts to fit an uncooked turkey on her head.

In the opening shot, she could be seen rearranging the turkey so her head could fit inside, saying, “I think — hold on — let me turn this leg out — okay, sorry, this is really f------ gross.” 

She attempted to put it on her head only to note that “it does hurt, that bone hurts,” to which her assistant responded, “It really does?” Cox added, “It really hurts.” 

In another scene where she attempted to put the turkey over her head again she said, “Okay, it’s so disgusting.” She later asked her assistant to “give me that towel over my head” adding “that hurts like a motherf-----.”

Without vents inside the turkey, Cox ran into another issue: "Hold on, I can’t breathe," she said, proceeding to take the turkey off her head. 

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So despite there being no real turkey involved in the initial scene, the magic still lives on. It’s still considered one of the top moments in Thanksgiving sitcom history, especially as the scene ended with Perry’s character Chandler finally telling Cox’s Monica that he loved her.

As Crane recalled its impact in 2016, “[The episode is] crazy, and the comedy is really big. We felt we could get away with this because the end of the show is real, emotional, and grounded. At the very end, when it’s at its silliest, you have this moment between Monica and Chandler, which is incredibly sweet.”