A decade before Monica Geller came into our living rooms, Courteney Cox was just Bruce Springsteen‘s biggest fan.
The Friends alum Courteney Cox threw it back to her appearance in Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 music video for ‘Dancing in the Dark’ as she jumped on a TikTok trend that asks parents how they danced during the decade.
“1980’s dancing…in the dark,” Courteney Cox captioned the video.
In the clip, she begins dancing to the 1984 synth-pop hit ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat, which is commonly used with the social trend.
Looking uncomfortable during her dance, Cox then strips off her hoodie to reveal the same Springsteen t-shirt she wore in the “Dancing in the Dark” video as the track changes and she recreates her dance.
Cox was 20 years old when she was selected by director Brian De Palma from a casting call for the video, which was filmed at the opening night of Springsteen’s Born in the USA Tour in Saint Paul, Minnesota and featured
The Boss pulling her out of the crowd to dance on stage with him.
Although Cox previously said the video “got me in the door to so many places,” she admitted on Off Camera in 2017 that she “didn’t want to be the one” picked to go onstage.
The Shining Veil actress explained that she originally filmed another sequence with her character’s friends, getting ready before the concert, which didn’t make it into the final cut. The actresses were told that one of them would be picked to go onstage, but not which one.
“I don’t not want to be the one to have to go,” said Cox. “I didn’t want to dance in front of 30,000 people. It was a full concert, and we did the song twice, back to back.”
Cox, who had only done two days of work on As the World Turns at the time, later went on to her star-making role in Friends from 1994 to 2004.