Matthew Perry - A Legacy of Helping
There was more to Matthew Perry than just Chandler Bing
It’s fair to say that I’ve spent many, many hours with the TV show Friends. I’ve quite literally written the book on it (well, a book on it). So, unsurprisingly, when the news broke at around half past one this morning that Matthew Perry had sadly and unexpectedly passed away at the age of just 54, I heard it from multiple people at once. Throughout today, heartfelt tributes have poured out across social media for Perry, including this wonderful Rolling Stone piece from Alan Sepinwall. Grieving a celebrity is a strange feeling. Does it make sense to feel so incredibly sad about the death of a person I’ve never met? Absolutely not. But then, grief in general makes very little sense. And while I never met Matthew Perry, didn’t know him personally and he absolutely had no idea that I existed, he has been a part of my life since I started watching Friends because my big sister liked it. Losing him is a very sad thing.
The role of Chandler Bing on Friends very nearly didn’t go to Matthew Perry. At the time the casting process began for Insomnia Cafe, which became Six of One and then Friends Like Us before being truncated to Friends, Matthew Perry was already committed to another show. Fox’s L.A.X 2194 - a show about baggage handlers in the future starring Perry alongside fellow Canadian Ryan Stiles - was in the pilot stage, and until the network chose to pick it up or leave it to die, Perry wasn’t able to sign on to another show. So many actors saw that he would have been perfect for the role of Chandler in the hot audition script burning through Hollywood that he found himself coaching multiple people on their auditions. His close friends Craig Bierko and Hank Azaria both auditioned for Friends Like Us - Azaria went for Joey, and while he didn’t get the part he did eventually win a recurring role as David the Science Guy, while Bierko was actually offered the role of Chandler. In his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry recounted watching Craig Bierko turn down the role of Chandler to take the lead in another new pilot - Best Friends. Eventually Jamie Tarses at NBC asked her then-husband - Fox producer Dan McDermott - if there was any chance that L.A.X. 2194 would be picked up. The response was a firm “no” and finally, Matthew Perry was able to audition for the role of Chandler Bing. He was the last of the core six to be cast on the show, but it was a part he was destined to get.
It’s difficult not to get hyperbolic about the huge impact Friends had on the world of television - which is why I’ve written close to 80,000 words on it. Matthew Perry’s part of that impact can’t be understated. From his “And I just want a million dollars” in the pilot episode as a rain-soaked, wedding dress-clad Jennifer Aniston makes her entrance, through his unique inflections that grew into cast-wide parody (“Could I be wearing any more clothes?”), right up to getting the very last line in the show, Chandler’s sarcastic interjections lit up the show. In his memoir, Matthew Perry compared Chandler to the Fool in King Lear, the observer that wrapped up scenes neatly with a joke. The character grew throughout the show, becoming the one half of the best romance of Friends’ ten seasons. The sarcasm, the dry humour and perfect delivery of wry jokes are what Chandler Bing and Matthew Perry are remembered for, but he also delivered some beautiful emotional moments. When, in the final season, he delivers an impassioned plea to Anna Faris’s Erica, convincing her to let Chandler and Monica adopt her baby(s), you can hear the live audience welling up. That audience was a fire under Matthew Perry - he eventually admitted on the Friends reunion released in 2021 that he would almost always be filled with an immense panic that he’d fail to make them laugh. Of course, he never failed. Outtakes and blooper reels show him constantly riffing, finding every opportunity to extract an extra giggle from the people filling the studio bleachers.
All of the Friends stars found themselves in starring movie roles as the show grew in popularity. For Matthew Perry, one of those roles was in The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis. Willis was absolutely certain that the movie would be a flop, and Perry was certain it would be a hit. He and Willis made a bet - if the movie was a success, Bruce Willis would have to guest star on Friends. The movie went on to be number one in the States for three weeks straight, and Bruce Willis appeared in three episodes of Friends. The movie was such a success that Perry was sure the sequel - The Whole Ten Yards would carry him through after the end of Friends in 2004. Unfortunately, it bombed. After an Emmy nominated guest appearance on The West Wing, Matthew Perry got the starring role in Aaron Sorkin’s newest drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - which unfortunately lasted just a single season.
Perry never found another Friends, but his legacy is so much more than a single show. He wrote, and starred in, The End of Longing - a play that dove deep into his own history with alcoholism and drug addiction. He helped other people with their own sobriety, speaking at AA meetings, sponsoring people and even founding a sober living house called Perry House. Last year, he released his incredible memoir. No ghostwriter was involved in the book, and it’s an incredible, searingly honest piece of writing. Perry didn’t shy away from his struggles or the messier aspects of his history, and the result is a fantastic, if tough, read.
As co-stars and Friends fans pay tribute across the internet to Matthew Perry, there’s a shared, strange grief. He was a complicated man, much more than just his ten years as Chandler Bing. He was incredibly talented, witty and sharp. He spoke in multiple interviews about the legacy he wanted to leave behind, that he wanted to be remembered for the times he helped people. Realistically, Friends is what he’ll be remembered for most, but the importance of making people laugh, and feel, and cry, is a help that can’t be understated. Matthew Perry spent much of his early life desperate to be famous, only to learn that it was far from the most important thing. In a million ways he might not have even known though, that fame led to him helping. He will be sorely missed.