Who Plays Sandy On Friends & What Has He Done Since?
Over its 10-season run, "Friends" featured a long list of guest stars who came and went through the doors of the gang's New York City apartments, but one of the most memorable was Sandy. The ultra-sensitive, soft-voiced babysitter hired by Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and a reluctant Ross (David Schwimmer) for their baby daughter Emma appears in the Season 8 episode "The One With the Male Nanny," which also happens to be the 200th episode of the classic NBC series. The "unorthodox" (Sandy's words) sitter is promptly fired by Ross after a misunderstanding over gender roles -– and over toy dinosaurs -– but the actor who plays him is far from a one-hit wonder.
The Sandy character is played by actor Freddie Prinze Jr. of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" fame, but he only scored the role after an A-list actor dropped out of the role at the last minute. Prinze made the reveal on the "Lights, Camera, Barstool" podcast, explaining that Tom Hanks was originally cast for the Sandy role but couldn't get to the set in time due to travel issues. Prinze took the part on the fly and the rest is history.
But in the 20 years since he was a short-time "Friend," Prinze has gone on to even bigger things, and one of his biggest roles was off-camera.
Freddie Prinze Jr. went into semi-retirement when his kids were born
Freddie Prinze Jr. was born with the acting gene; he is the son of the late "Chico and the Man" actor Freddie Prinze, who died in January 1977 when he was still a baby. The younger Prinze began acting professionally as a teen. After his "Friends" role, he starred in the hit "Scooby-Doo" live-action movie, playing the main Mystery Machine driver Fred Jones. He also played the title character in the 2005 sitcom "Freddie" and made cameos on "Boston Legal," "The George Lopez Show," and more before lending his voice to a string of video games and animated features. A lifelong pro wrestling fan, he also spent some time with WWE as a writer and producer.
What Prinze didn't do was take lead roles on TV or in films for a decade-long stretch. After marrying Sarah Michelle Gellar, Prinze scaled back on work and became a Sandy of sorts as he focused on raising their kids, Charlotte and Rocky. "When my daughter was born, I wanted to be a full-time dad. I didn't grow up with one so that was always the most important thing to me," the actor said in a 2022 interview on "The Talk."
Even during his hiatus, Prinze was offered lead roles, mostly in romantic comedies. "I was just never reading any of the scripts. I didn't have any interest in doing it," he told Esquire in 2022. But that same year, Prinze was lured back onscreen by a role as the head of a Latino family in the Netflix rom-com "Christmas With You." He told "The Talk" co-hosts that he had never had the chance to play a father before and wanted to show off his real-life experience.