David Schwimmer will always be known as Ross on “Friends,” but 30 years after that landmark series launched, the actor finds himself back in time with the Hulu/Disney+ “Goosebumps: The Vanishing” series, now streaming.

Schwimmer, 58, leads a brand-new cast as Anthony Brewer, a former botany professor now immersed in science and mystery. Like the original, this “Goosebumps” is an anthology series with a new cast and new premise each season.

“Vanishing” begins when twins Cece and Devin Brewer spend a summer in Gravesend, Brooklyn, with their divorced dad and quickly realize there are dark secrets that relate to four teenagers who mysteriously vanished in 1994.

Does this feel for Schwimmer like a return?

“I never felt I retired from acting,” Schwimmer explained in a phone interview. “I’ve intentionally slowed down to focus on family. I’m just enjoying being a dad so much, I want to be present until my kid goes off to college. So I’m just pickier.”

Divorced, he lives in Manhattan’s East Village and co-parents his only child, Cleo Buckman Schwimmer, 13.

“I’ve been a little pickier and, frankly, more reluctant to leave home during these years. But when this came up – and that it shot where I live – it was just too, too wonderful an opportunity.

“I’ve always been a fan of action comedy and to be able to play this guy who starts to change and is a dad – and then shoot at home, it was, ‘Yeah, this is a dream job.’”

Yet, there’s gravitas in this supernatural thriller. Hardly what we think of as escapist fun.

“That’s so true. Yet it turns out to be really fun with a lot of comedy. But you’re absolutely right – which is one of the reasons, actually, I was attracted to the character. Because there was so much going on in his life!

“That felt so real and grounded emotionally. Being a divorced dad, having his kids come stay with him for the summer in the house that he grew up in and being on sabbatical from his job because he’s got to take care of his mother, who’s got dementia. I mean, there’s a lot of backstory.

“And there’s even more. Because what we really realize as the series unfolds and the kids unravel this mystery, is we discover everything’s linked to what happened back in 1994, to my character’s older brother, who was a teenager who mysteriously disappeared.

“That trauma, that tragedy, that loss of my only brother impacted all of our lives. Yet the whole series is told in a way that is just this great action comedy adventure. Because it does have ghosts. It does have curses, and a sort of crazy magic science.”

“Goosebumps: The Vanishing” is streaming on Hulu and Disney+

David Schwimmer plays a former botany professor caught up in mystery in “Goosebumps.” (Photo Francisco Roman/Disney)