The Ant Man actor joined the sitcom in its ninth series as Phoebe’s love interest Mike Hannigan, who she eventually went on to marry.
But while Mike was immediately popular among Friends fans, Paul didn’t exactly get off to a flying start with his fellow cast members when he first joined the show.
In an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Paul admitted: “I was on the set for my first episode and Jennifer [Aniston] was on a Segway because she had broken her toe, and everyone was marvelling at it.
“Matt LeBlanc asked to have a go and immediately knew how to do it. I then asked to try it too. I spun round and rolled it right over Jennifer’s foot!”
He continued: “The producers look of panic was if to say, ‘Is it too late to fire him? Has his character been established yet?’ I felt awful. Such an inauspicious start.”
Fortunately for him, Paul managed to stay the distance, even appearing in the last ever episode of the hit sitcom.
“It was an incredible thing to be part of and the whole experience, but seems a bit surreal and a bit of a blur in my memory,” he recalled. “The show was a phenomenon and I was in the very last episode, which made no sense to me whatsoever.
“I was on the sound stage and Jennifer Aniston was crying and I thought, ‘I’m not supposed to be here’, so to break the ice I went over and said, ‘Well, we did it, what a ride.’ The joke inevitably fell flat!”
Paul’s new series Living With Yourself is now streaming on Netflix, and sees the actor playing two incarnations of the same character.
The full interview was on The Graham Norton Show on BBC One.