The One About Matthew Perry (2026) s01e01 Episode Script
Part I
[traffic hums]
[birds chirping]
[car honks]
[birds twittering]
[man] For me, there's a bizarre need
to live sort of a creative life.
I love being in a world
where I'm trying to make people laugh.
[quirky music playing]
I was auditioning for stuff.
Very exciting thing about this business
is you don't know what's gonna happen.
It's also a very difficult thing about it.
There were certainly big chunks of time
where I didn't work at all.
And when I was 24, I must've had
terrible business managers at the time
because they just called me and went,
"You have no money."
I was like,
"How about a heads-up two weeks ago?"
-[host laughs]
-Whoa!
-And, uh…
-Whoa!
And I had no idea what to do.
[pensive music playing]
I haven't prayed often.
But I… I made a prayer,
and I said, "God, you can do
anything you want to me."
"Just please make me famous."
[booming thud]
[whooshing]
About three weeks later,
my agents got me a show called LAX 2194…
God, I love my life.
…about baggage handlers
in the year 2194 at LAX.
I was the head baggage handler.
Enjoy Los Angeles.
And my job was to sort out
aliens' luggage.
Thank you.
-This was a show that…
-Mm-hmm.
-[snaps fingers]
-…I just accepted immediately.
[soft piano music playing]
And then, all of a sudden,
this wonderful script,
at the time called Friends Like Us,
came around.
And it just had a part in it
that leapt off the page,
uh, as something that was
very similar to me and had my rhythms.
-Oh my God!
-[audience laughs]
It was about a guy who…
-Ooh, I'm alive with pleasure now.
-[laughter]
[babbling]
…was sort of trying to…
Does it get better than this?
…distract everybody from how miserable
he was all the time by being funny.
[whimsical music playing]
[man] I remember hanging out,
and Matt was talking about
wanting the Friends pilot,
because he thought that would be
the one that would change his life.
I do remember that he said,
"Somebody has written a script."
"This is me."
Chandler's definitely him.
And I kept calling my agents, going,
"I don't think the baggage handler show
is gonna get picked up."
-"You've got to get me in on this."
-"Can I go read for this?"
He was calling our dad,
like, all the time,
talking to him about, "What should I do?"
"How do I get off of this hold?"
And, you know, there was just…
there was a lot of tension
and buildup in the house around it.
[sweeping music playing]
[Matthew] And then one day,
I got a phone call that said, you know,
"You're gonna be very happy. You have
an audition for Friends on Wednesday."
[radio presenter] Glendale at 84,
Van Nuys to 93, Woodland Hills to 94…
[Roger] I took him to that audition.
We worked in the car
and just, like, go over the sides.
And he was super excited about it.
[rising orchestral music playing]
We had been casting this show
for a couple of months.
There was anxiety,
because all of the casting
was fairly easy,
except for the role of Chandler.
They couldn't find a Chandler.
And so, with all the excitement, was…
[music rises, stops]
…"Holy shit, where's Chandler Bing?"
And then,
Matthew Perry came into the room.
[music restarts]
[door slams loudly]
He did a couple of scenes.
Hi. Um… [clears throat]
Okay, next word would be,
uh, Chandler.
[nervous chuckle]
Chandler is my name and, uh…
[clears throat] Hi.
I was leaning forward.
Could you want her more?
That is so not true.
Okay, rock, hard place, me.
I couldn't get enough. I wanted more.
-Yes.
-[audience laughing]
[Warren] It took less than 30 seconds
to feel the…
"Oh yeah, this is it."
"This is… this is Chandler."
[Matthew] This was a job I really wanted
so I was checking my messages
like a freak of nature.
And no message. I thought it was gone.
[tense music playing]
I was sitting at the table
with my parents, and the phone rang.
Of course, like, the landline rings.
My dad hops up and runs to the phone,
picks up the phone.
You hear him quiet for a second,
and then he goes, "Yes!"
Like, it's super loud.
And then, "He got it!"
And everyone, we were just…
My mom and I were sitting at the table,
like, "Oh my God!"
He said he got it.
And I remember,
I was not surprised that he got the part.
I got that message, and then it was just…
-[snaps fingers]
-…life changed, and I, um…
You know, I was with a friend of mine,
so I, you know, basically screamed,
-"I got it!"
-[woman laughing]
And then said,
"I'm way too big to hang out with you."
-And got out of there.
-[laughter]
-[Matt LeBlanc laughing]
-[audience applauding]
[cymbal crashes faintly, music ends]
-[director] 33B, take three, marker.
-[rolling tongue]
[rapid clapperboard claps]
-[director] And clear.
-[chuckles softly]
[footsteps receding]
[inhales, exhales deeply]
[softly] Okay. Hm.
[reporter] Mia, why are you sharing
your story today?
Yeah, um…
Hmm.
[inhales softly]
Ever since Matthew
became Matthew Perry…
[chuckles]
…um, I was always really afraid of,
and really skeptical of, ever talking to
really anybody about…
my experience with him or…
And there's certainly been
a lot of opportunities.
[pensive music playing]
But I have a lot to say about
what happened.
Yeah, all great stories
have comedy and tragedy in them.
And that certainly was Matthew's story.
And, um…
[soft clicking]
And I'm just imagining his face right now
in his prime…
[music stops]
…when none of the bad stuff
had started happening quite yet.
[foreboding music playing]
[Matthew] I love the process of acting.
Between action and cut,
it's kind of you're in heaven.
You know, there's… there's a sort of
magic element of why people laugh.
[audience laughing]
[Roger] I always thought of Matthew Perry
as one of the funniest guys ever.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! Woof, woof!
[Roger] I never had any doubt
that he would be successful.
Yeah.
[melodramatic violin music playing]
My name is Roger Castillo.
And, uh, Matthew has been my best friend
for most of my life.
We met in Los Angeles in '87.
I'm pretty sure
Matt was around 17 years old.
And I was
three or four years older than him.
So he wasn't famous yet.
It had been about a year
after I moved from Miami to Los Angeles.
And I think
I was just doing odd jobs then.
I was, you know… I was young
and just trying to get settled in,
you know.
Matthew always said, "You, me,
and David Pressman are going to be
three sarcastic, bitter old men
on a park bench for sure."
The three of us were, like, inseparable.
My name is David Pressman.
And, uh, I was Matthew's buddy for…
[inhales deeply]
…about 40 years.
Back then, we were young and having fun.
And we were at the Formosa all the time.
Matt would always say that
the Formosa Cafe
is where we went to college.
This place is legendary.
I mean, it's right next
to Warner Bros. Hollywood,
and Elvis Presley, Clark Gable,
everybody frequented that bar.
['90s pop music playing]
[David] We would walk in there,
and we would know everybody
at every booth.
It was just really
our home away from home.
[Roger] The bartender was an old guy,
like straight out
of an old James Cagney movie.
He was like, "What are you guys having,
you movie stars?"
[David] We loved sitting in the corner.
That was the big booth.
You know, just holding court.
[Roger] There was me, Matthew,
David Pressman, and Hank Azaria.
And the waitresses, like,
they knew exactly what our drinks were.
We probably drank a little too much
those nights.
But we were just looking to have fun
and laugh.
[quirky music playing]
All we ever did was speak in questions.
That was our whole thing.
If a girl was attractive,
we would go, "Is she hot?"
And if you ask that question,
"Is she hot?" that means she's hot.
And then we would shorten the words.
"Is she hot?" later became "shot."
It was just like, "Shot!"
Uh, really loud, yeah.
When a situation was awkward,
Matt would just yell, "Goot!"
which meant,
"This is terrible, let's get out."
There was a goot face.
I can't even do it now.
Like that.
[Roger] You'll see in a lot of pictures,
it was just stretching our mouth.
It was always making each other laugh.
We loved the same shows, the same movies.
We were in movie theaters all the time.
And then, after the movie lets out,
there's like 30 people in the bathroom,
and then one of us would be in the stall,
and they would be like, "Ow, it burns!"
Good, I'm so glad Roger shared all this.
[yowling]
[chuckles] You know.
You know, things like that.
[David] One of the first cars Matthew had
was a tiny red Miata,
which are convertible cars.
Bright red.
I would drive with him,
and, uh, he would be blaring Enya.
["Orinoco Flow" by Enya playing]
Sail away, sail away, sail away… ♪
[David] So we'd be driving down
Sunset Boulevard.
People would be driving by us like,
"Look at these nerds."
Girls would be driving by us giggling,
and I'm like, "Dude, please change this."
He goes, "Yeah, you're right."
And then he'd change it,
and he'd put in John Tesh.
[energetic music playing]
I'd be like, "Oh, for fuck's sake,
this is not helping."
[Roger] We were so immature
and so ridiculous.
And we were trying to meet girls,
and Matt would be friends with girls
that he had crushes on.
He had a crush on this girl, Marjorie.
[chuckling]
He had this sort of persona of,
"I never get the girl."
"But when I'm famous,
I'll get all the girls."
[soft jazz music playing]
I met Matthew in 1987.
We were both young actors
living in Los Angeles.
There was a group of us,
and everybody was sort of searching
for a sense of belonging in this big city
and a sense of home.
And friends became family.
Hank and Matt lived in the same building,
and a few blocks away, I had a house.
So they started coming to the house
pretty much every day,
every night after auditions.
And drinking was part of the fun.
We played a lot of games,
truth or dare,
spin the bottle.
And at the time,
Matthew had a crush on me.
But I just wasn't interested in dating.
It became an ongoing routine
for Matthew to keep trying.
[chuckling]
It wasn't subtle.
It wasn't nuanced. It wasn't a hint.
It was, "Is tonight the night
we're gonna make out?"
[chuckling]
One night, we were at my house,
I think playing I Never all night.
[chuckles]
And, um, there was drinking.
And at the end of the night,
he wanted to know if I wanted to come
to his place, go home with him.
And, um, that was a night
where he wore me down for the first time.
[laughs] I thought I was open to it.
We got into the car.
[tires screeching]
We were driving to his house,
and a car smashed into the backseat.
[loud crash]
[pensive music playing]
Matthew started right away yelling.
He was, like, very upset.
And I looked at him and said,
"It wasn't his fault.
You ran a red light."
And he was horrified.
He was horrified. He was like, "Oh no."
Matthew was drunk.
And, um, I think about it differently now
than I did at the time.
After that accident,
I don't think, uh, either one of us
was feeling terribly romantic.
And, um, that was the end
of any potential romantic relationship
at that point.
But Matthew and I became
very close friends.
But it took a while to learn
and to make sense
of what Matthew's upbringing was.
It was like a jigsaw puzzle.
[pensive music playing]
[Mia] Growing up,
Matthew had two different families
because his mom and dad split
when he was a baby.
[Matthew] I grew up for the most part
with just my mother.
Then she got married
when I was, I guess, 11 to Keith Morrison…
NBC News at This Hour, I'm Keith Morrison.
[Matthew] …the NBC anchorman.
[Mia] When he was a teenager,
Matthew's mom and his stepdad
had four children.
And then my mom and our father
got married in 1981.
And then I was born
when Matthew was about 14.
That's all the Perrys.
There they all are.
[photographs rustle]
And here's Dad.
[Matthew] My father's an actor.
He's been in the business a long time.
He was the Old Spice guy.
And my father lived in Los Angeles.
But I lived in Canada with my mother.
The only way I'd get to see my father
on a regular basis was on television.
He'd call up and say, "I'm on this show."
[shot fired]
So I'd be glued to my set watching him,
and I was like, "Great, I get to see Dad."
Your heart can't tell you what to do.
Your gut tells you.
[Matthew] I think I generated kind of
a respect for the business that way.
I went down to Los Angeles.
He did a show called 240-Robert.
[Mia] Matty, did, like, one episode
with our dad.
-Are you a doctor?
-No, my partner and I are paramedics.
What's a paramedic?
I'm pretty sure
from there on out he was hooked.
[Matthew] This is how
I kind of learned about acting.
But in school,
I was getting in trouble for, you know,
trying to be the class clown.
[Mia] He knew that he was funny
really early on in life
and knew that when he made people laugh,
it made him feel good.
He would make some kind of joke
or do some sort of bit.
It was like, "If everyone's laughing,
everything's gonna be okay."
[Matthew] Boy, did I make people laugh.
And I realized that if I have potential
of making money at it,
I should try to do that.
And then he started doing all sorts
of work and stuff in LA as a teenager.
[Roger] He took his acting and his comedy
very serious.
He would often go to coaches
and acting teachers,
and… and he did improv.
[Matthew] I did improv comedy for a while,
which is about eight people doing
different scene work that have no scripts.
[suspenseful music]
[improv actor] The next guest is a fellow
by the name of Jack Savage.
-How are you?
-No, no.
Jacques Sauvage, shh.
-Jacques Sauvage. So how are you today?
-Nah, nah, nah, nah.
Jacques Sauvage, shh.
Wait, let me try this one more time.
I'm enjoying this.
-Jacques Sauvage, shh.
-Shh.
-That's it.
-[stifled laugh]
[David] We were young actors.
Roger wasn't a young actor,
but Matthew and I were young actors
and, you know, Hank.
We just wanted to be working.
Uh, it was cool to be an actor.
This is actually gonna be like
a scene in a big film.
[Marjorie] What we had in common was
we were big dreamers,
and we were ambitious,
but we were pursuing it with a vengeance.
[pensive music playing]
[Roger] Back then, he didn't like
the little Honda CRX he had.
I had the nicer car.
And so I would go pick him up,
and we'd go to auditions.
[mic rustling]
Could I have less clue
as to how this works?
-[man] Do you want to sit down there?
-No, I have to…
Well, let's practice this first.
I remember taking him
to the Dead Poets Society
and, I believe, School Ties.
[clears throat]
Is that?
Those were ones
that he just, like, worked so hard on
and wanted so badly,
but he didn't get them.
Am I gonna do this again
because that sucked?
Every time you don't get a job,
it's either, "Okay, well, I gotta quit,"
or it fuels the fire to prove them wrong.
And then he was discovered
by a director named William Richert.
[Matthew] One day I was at a restaurant
in the Valley.
Now, let me just share something with you.
I was sitting at a table
with three cute girls.
I was trying to make them laugh,
and I was sort of all performey.
-Do you want to hear it?
-[girl] Yes!
[Matthew] Okay.
And I got a note from a, uh, waitress
that said that this director was in
and he wants you to be in his next movie.
I immediately thought, even at the time,
that this movie will probably be shot
in the back of this guy's van.
[Kevin laughs]
But I made a few phone calls.
It was a real movie called
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.
The director saw something special in him.
[Matthew] I got that movie,
to play River Phoenix's best friend.
-Stop here.
-I don't like this neighborhood.
Pull over.
That place is loaded with college girls.
[Roger] They were so opposite.
Matt was, you know, a red-meat-eating,
you know, charbroiled cheeseburger.
And River was just eating plants.
We didn't even know what a vegan was.
And then he would just tell us
what a vegan was,
and I was like, "That sounds awful."
But they really did have
a great admiration for each other.
[Matthew] I was in Chicago for two months.
-Greatest time in the world.
-[Kevin] That's fantastic!
It would have been a better story
if anybody'd seen the movie.
[chuckles] No. It would just have been
a different story.
[Matthew] That was how it started for me,
and I got my first, uh, television show
when I was 18.
[pensive music playing]
[man] I met Matthew Perry
when we tested in a chemistry read
for a series called Boys Will Be Boys.
We hit it off immediately.
Then we had a publicity photo shoot,
and Matthew Perry was not too happy
when he had to sit next to me…
[laughs]
…with my shirt off.
[theme song playing]
Boys Will Be Boys was about the exploits
of Chazz and Booch.
-Chazz Matazz.
-Booch!
I'm the Booch, this Fonz type character.
There's no chance
you're intimidated by her, is there?
Matthew played the role of Chazz.
It is to laugh.
[laughs sarcastically]
[Billy] We were two kids
running around chasing girls.
[audience cheers, exclaims]
[host] I have a Teen Beat magazine
right over here,
is Matthew in his own handwriting.
-[man laughing]
-[Matthew chuckles]
[host] You can get Matthew's handwriting
if you get Teen Beat.
[Matthew] If you can read it.
-[host] Huh?
-[Billy laughing]
-How do you guys get along?
-Great.
You're kinda like the street kid,
and he's the California kid.
I mean, how does that work?
Uh, we're kinda now
the California street kids.
-[host laughs]
-I don't know. We're getting along great.
[Billy] And our job was to figure out
how to make people laugh.
You know, where's the joke?
When it comes to girls,
you make Hugh Hefner look like a monk.
[laughter]
[Billy] And Matthew was so talented.
Because I'd read the script,
but then we'd go to rehearsals,
and then I'd see what Matt
would do with the script.
Let's go. Remember, act natural.
[scoffs]
[quirky music playing]
[audience laughing]
I mean, I was literally in tears because
I had no idea what he was gonna do.
[loud cheering and laughing]
You…
[Billy] He was willing
to throw himself around.
You know, I meant to do that.
The thing with Matt was
he always needed to get the laugh.
And I could see, like,
if his joke did not get a laugh,
or I got a bigger laugh,
that it would put him
in a bit of a tailspin, you know?
Which was tough.
[pensive music playing]
Eventually, the show got canceled.
We were both bummed, devastated.
You know, there goes our TV show.
But for a young actor with a dream,
you have to keep trying to make it.
And I'd see Matt on different shows,
you know, guest-starring on the show.
[Kevin] Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons.
Growing Pains.
-And Who's the Boss?
-[Matthew] Yes.
Okay, so I want to hear
at least nine minutes of struggle
somewhere in here.
The struggling, you know, not too long,
and then, one day, I got a phone call,
and I instantly knew
my whole life was gonna change.
[music swells gently]
[Warren] Audiences come
to their televisions for warmth…
-[audience laughing]
-…and relationships and entertainment.
They want it. They need that.
My name is Warren Littlefield,
and I was the president
of NBC Entertainment
when we developed Friends.
In the early '90s,
at NBC, we asked ourselves,
"What do we want to make
that has you racing home to watch it?"
And in late '93,
Marta Kauffman and David Crane came in
and said, "We have a show."
Marta and David, who were friends,
had some experience in television,
but not a lot.
The show was from their lives
and their experience
as twentysomethings in New York.
And it had authenticity.
And it was, like, wet-your-pants funny.
[adventurous music playing]
We loved it. So we made a deal.
And then Marta and David brought together
an amazing staff of writers.
I was in love with storytelling
kind of my whole life.
And I decided to move out to LA
to try and get into movies or television.
I remember getting
the Friends pilot script
and just said, "Oh my God, it's fantastic.
There's really something here."
Like, I want to be with these people.
I want to write about these people.
And Marta and David believed
that every story has to mean something.
And we had, you know,
six characters to tell stories about.
[Warren] And then we started
the casting process.
It was a search
for twentysomethings.
Jennifer was someone
who we'd worked with before.
She did some bad shows.
One night I was filling up my car
at the gas station on Sunset,
and at the other island was Jennifer.
And she came over,
and she goes, "Hi," you know,
"Is it ever going to happen for me?"
[sighs] I said,
"We love you. We believe in you."
And then she auditioned for Friends.
Lives would change in that casting room.
And for Friends,
Chandler was the last one cast.
[light music playing]
And then finally Matthew Perry came in.
I was very familiar with the script
and very familiar with the character,
because a lot of my friends
had been calling and saying,
"There's this guy on this show
that is you."
"Can you help me with the audition?"
So much so that I knew all the material
when I went in.
Oh, right. You knew if I could just get in
the room, I could so own this.
[Warren] And then he just nailed it.
And it was just like,
"Where's this guy been?"
On Wednesday,
I auditioned for Marta Kauffman.
On Thursday, I read for the studio.
On Friday, I read for the network.
And we started on Monday.
-So…
-That's crazy.
Yeah, that's how fast it all happened.
[Warren] Now we had a young,
exciting cast.
And then you go to a table read,
and anything can happen
at a table reading.
[power switch clicks]
There's a big, enormous table
with the cast sitting around that.
Network is there.
And everyone on the production side
is there.
And the writers.
[Jeff] As a writer,
you're writing a character,
you're imagining a character.
What you want is somebody
who takes what you wrote,
as perfect as it can be,
and makes it into something more.
[Warren] We had cast
all six actors individually.
We had never heard or seen
anybody together.
And so we're bringing
all these hopes and expectations.
And then they proceed to read that script.
[bright music playing]
[Courteney as Monica] This is not
even a date.
It's just two people going out to dinner
and not having sex.
[Matthew as Chandler] Sounds like a date
to me.
It was wildly entertaining.
And they had this chemistry.
[Jennifer as Rachel] So, like, you guys
all have jobs?
[Courteney as Monica] Yeah,
we all have jobs.
See, that's how we buy stuff.
You could feel this wonderful,
functioning, miraculous sparkle
between the cast members.
[Matthew] There wasn't a weak link.
I'd gotten past my ego mistake
of wanting to be the only funny person.
You know, when that happens,
when you're watching some castmate
be really funny,
and that angers you or something.
-I used to have that big-time.
-[Kevin] Sure.
But I'd been in enough failed TV shows
to know that that's not the attitude.
[mellow music playing]
[Warren] We wanted to see this young cast
navigate the world together.
[Courteney as Monica]
Welcome to the real world.
It sucks. You're gonna love it.
We had high hopes off of the table read.
So we made the pilot.
-[switch clicks]
-[audience cheers, applauds]
We taped in front of a live audience.
[crew member] Quiet please. Standby.
I did go to the first taping
and remember sitting in the stands.
[chuckles] And I remember
Matthew caught my eye in the stands.
I just heard him,
like he's mouthing, "Is it funny?"
And I was like, "Yeah, it's funny."
We believed in it,
but it's also a bit scary
because you're in new territory.
[music stops]
[musical chime]
[ambient city noise]
[musical chime]
[woman] When Friends premiered in 1994,
on September 22nd,
it premiered at 8:30.
So it was between Mad About You
and Seinfeld.
[mellow music playing]
It really was the most important
broadcast time slot.
[Warren] Friends premiered.
And what I like to do in New York is
I work at my office till fairly late,
and then I would go for a walk
on the streets of New York
to spy on people's windows
and see what they were watching.
I remember that Thursday night in '94,
people were watching.
["I'll Be There for You"
by the Rembrandts playing]
[Mia] We definitely watched the pilot.
This is not even a date.
It's just two people going out to dinner
and not having sex.
Sounds like a date to me.
[audience laughs]
And I remember
just how sweet and funny it was.
I just want to be married again.
[audience laughs]
And I just want a million dollars!
Everybody fell in love with them
immediately, including us.
Okay, everybody, this is Rachel.
This is everybody.
This is Chandler and Phoebe and Joey.
It was brilliantly written.
I mean, the jokes were just nonstop.
-You remember my brother, Ross?
-Sure.
-Hey.
-Hi.
[Rachel gasps]
[Mary] It was sometimes very physical.
Once I was a wooden boy
A little wooden boy ♪
The delivery was always dead-on.
Whoa, this is a Dear Diary moment.
[Mary] There was kind of like
an I Love Lucy energy to it.
-Hey, Pheebs, you want to help?
-I wish I could, but I don't want to.
Because it had such a large ensemble,
everybody could find their humor
somewhere.
I honestly don't know
if I'm hungry or horny.
Then stay out of my freezer.
Watching it, I think I did actually say
to my husband at the time,
"This is gonna be a huge hit."
[dramatic music playing]
[Jeff] I will remember forever
the first table read
after the pilot aired.
James Burrows, our director,
asked the cast when they walked in,
"Has anyone been to a shopping mall?"
Because the show premiered,
and millions and millions of people
watched that first episode.
And what he was acknowledging was
your lives have changed forever.
-[camera operator] Rolling!
-[director] Action.
As we were shooting Friends,
we would watch the ratings.
Were we tied with
or beating Mad About You?
Were we tied with or beating Seinfeld?
But also just stunned and shocked
at… at what the response would be.
[reporter 1] This brand-new show
going on NBC…
[reporter 2] Thursday night show, Friends,
it's become quite a hit this season.
[Warren] Our little child was walking.
Not running, not skipping, but it was
like, "This is good. This is good."
And we continued to keep pushing.
[Jeff] To those of us
in the writers' room,
you're asking yourself on a daily basis,
"How are we going to maintain,
exceed, improve,
grow, do more, do better, keep this up?"
[upbeat music playing]
Matthew and I would hang out
and talk comedy.
And I remember
he had this enthusiasm and passion
for what made something really funny.
He studied Jerry Lewis and Jackie Gleason.
He loved Chevy Chase.
No problem.
[laughing and cheering]
[Roger] And Dick Van Dyke.
[comedic piano sting]
These are all huge
physical-comedy people, you know?
And then he made it his.
[telephone rings]
Hello. Hello.
-Bah!
-[both shriek]
[drawer rattles, thuds]
[Jeff] Matthew had this miraculous ability
to take what we wrote,
let it be ours…
[audience exclaiming]
…but also make it be his
in a way that made it more.
For… Flannin…
[breathes heavily]
[Jeff] Matthew took whatever we imagined
and put it someplace we had not imagined.
[audience laughs]
It was creative and exciting
and a fun place to go to work every day…
[bright music playing]
…because everybody was funny.
The whole reason to be there
was to try to think of the funniest thing
to do that day.
That's a world
that I want to be involved in.
[Jeff] Our job was to care deeply
about imaginary people.
I loved writing for Chandler.
It's the next day.
How needy do I want to seem?
[Jeff] Chandler was bristly and sarcastic.
-I got her machine.
-Her answering machine?
No, interestingly enough,
her leaf blower picked up.
And would poke at his own
and other people's weak points.
-You don't think that makes me seem…
-Desperate, needy, pathetic.
[audience laughs]
Ah, you obviously saw my personal ad.
Matthew's relationship to that character
was pretty strong.
Um, for all kinds of good reasons.
There was this overwhelming pool
of visible vulnerability
in both Matthew and the character.
Filling silences with jokes and struggling
in his relationships with women.
Yes, back then, I, uh, used humor
as a defense mechanism.
Thank God I don't do that anymore.
I think he honestly owned those
in real life and on TV.
I think that came out of me,
uh, coming to the set
and saying to the producers
how awkward me asking girls out
had gotten in my life
-and how nervous I was.
-[Jennifer chuckles]
They said, "Well, you know what,
that'll be funny."
"We'll take advantage
of that horrible thing in your own life."
[Jennifer laughs]
"And put it on national television
for millions of people to see."
[Matt LeBlanc guffaws]
But the story for Chandler
that was really meaningful
for understanding the character, um,
was that Chandler got locked
in an ATM vestibule with a supermodel,
uh, with Jill Goodacre.
Oh my God, it's her.
It's that Victoria's Secret model.
[Jeff] And what that did
was allow us to play
the majority of that episode
with him not speaking
because he was, understandably,
uh, too nervous to speak
to this unbelievably beautiful woman.
And so we got to play
Chandler's experience of this physically
and as internal monologue.
You know, on second thought,
gum would be perfection.
Gum would be perfection?
Gum would be perfection.
Could have said,
"Gum would be nice. I'll have a stick."
But no, no, no, no, no.
For me, gum is perfection.
I loathe myself.
And watching him struggle in that moment
was one of the most powerful revelations
of both Matthew as an actor,
but also of the character of Chandler.
And because it gave us a chance
to hear the voices in his head
that he hears all the time.
Would you like to call somebody?
Yeah, about 300 guys
I went to high school with.
[laughter]
We were working
between six and seven days a week
and from early in the morning
until very late at night every day.
But then the audiences,
when they would come for the show,
went from being curious and delighted
to being fanatical very quickly.
[Mia] At the tapings, there would just be
lines and lines and lines of people,
and they're just so excited about it.
It was a complete phenomenon.
It was amazing.
[fan] Here we go, we're going in.
[Mia] And there's cameras going.
It reminds us of the way we act.
It's got a great wit.
-Hilarious…
-We love the characters.
[chuckles] My favorite is Chandler.
[Mia] We'd all get to sit in the audience,
but we would definitely go backstage.
I remember Jennifer Aniston and
Courteney Cox wanting to play with my hair
and being like,
"Oh, the little sister's here."
And I was so insanely proud of Matthew.
[applause]
[Warren] The cast had this feeling
of like, "Us? This is happening to us?"
And you'd have Matthew with like,
"Of course this is happening."
[applause]
[bright music playing]
During the second season,
I was shopping at a mall,
and I just saw
Friends merchandise everywhere.
And everywhere I went,
I would just see his big face.
Well, that's when it hit me.
Friends was everywhere.
The theme song was on Billboard charts.
Everybody wanted the Rachel haircut.
People were picking up on Chandler's,
like, you know,
"Could this be more awkward?"
Could she be more out of my league?
Could you want her more?
-That is so not true.
-[laughs]
Chandler became
one of the most beloved characters,
and that was absolutely
because of Matthew Perry.
[man] Favorite friend, Matthew Perry.
He's been building for a while,
he's very funny,
gets the most laughs on the show,
so he's on the rise, without a doubt.
[rapid cymbal hits]
All of a sudden, everybody knew his name.
[Jay Leno] Matthew Perry, folks.
Welcome, Matthew.
[audience cheering]
Matthew Perry, ladies and gentlemen.
[Jon Stewart] Please welcome
Matthew Perry.
[Mia] Matty got to go on
all of the late night talk shows.
-What have you done to my audience?
-Hi.
Extremely hot right now.
[David Letterman] Friends is currently
the number one show on television.
Is this your first huge television hit?
Uh, yes. This is the first one
that anyone but my mom has watched.
-So, uh…
-It must be going great for you?
Matthew went from being
like a guy I would hang out with…
[man] Mr. Perry, Mr. LeBlanc!
…to being a guy who was not so available
to hang out with anymore.
I wasn't mad at it. I understood it.
And he leaned into it.
-[fan 1] Hey, Matt!
-[fan 2] Matt!
[fans clamoring]
[Roger] All this adoration he got,
and love,
and people wanting to take a picture
and an autograph,
and just his level of fame was insane.
Matthew Perry. There you go.
It was exciting and a massive, massive
life shift moment for our whole family.
Anytime I was with him,
we would get followed by paparazzi
and get our picture taken too.
And all of a sudden,
this is our new reality.
-[paparazzo] Matthew…
-Hey.
…now that you have a hit show
you're still gonna talk to us?
-Yes.
-Hey, great. Congratulations on the show.
-Thank you.
-You deserve it.
He would make jokes of,
"Oh, I'm so famous,"
and "how rich he is" jokes.
He liked cars, and he liked homes.
Come on in. I'll show you my house.
This is the living room area.
As you can see,
I haven't, uh, quite finished.
This is my favorite area of the house
right here.
I don't know what this area is for.
I haven't quite figured this out.
Matthew was always incredibly generous
with his money.
Like, for Christmas, when I was 15,
when we were coming out from dinner,
the valet drives up
in a red Ford Mustang convertible,
and the valet guy gets out of the car
with the keys in his hand and goes,
"Maria Perry, is Maria Perry here?"
And I was like, "Wait, what?"
And Matthew goes,
"Yeah, that is your car. Merry Christmas."
[festive music playing]
Success did bring in a lot of access
to joy and fun and adventure.
-Do you know where the Playboy Mansion is?
-[David] No idea.
Matthew and I would get invited
to the, uh, Playboy Mansion a lot.
[Matthew] All right, Playboy Mansion.
[David] I remember walking in,
and the first thing we saw was
Corey Feldman and a Playmate
versus Scott Baio and a Playmate
in volleyball.
And I was like, "I have arrived."
Hi, how are you?
[David] He did well with girls.
Uh, girls loved him.
[Matthew] How you doing?
[David] He knew how to charm them.
[Matthew] Oh, okay.
-Well, who are you?
-My name's Matthew.
-You're cute. Matthew what?
-She thinks I'm cute.
I think he's adorable.
[Jeff] He basically had become that guy
who really, I think, was the guy
in the ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre
to a guy who was fighting women off.
[indistinct chatter]
Who are you dating?
I'm, uh…
I'm dating a woman named,
uh, Julia Roberts.
[reporter] Roberts has been dating
Friends star Matthew Perry
ever since she guest-starred on his show.
How could you still be upset about that?
Why don't you call me in 20 years
and tell me
if you're still upset about this.
[Roger] At that time,
she was just like as big as you can be.
But I was like, "God, my friend is dating
Julia Roberts. That's insane."
[David] There was one time
we were watching football.
They said, "Hey, Julia Roberts
is gonna come by to bring us pizza."
I'm like, "Yeah, cool.
Julia Roberts bringing us pizza."
So she came.
The paparazzi were all outside
wanting to get the very first picture
of Julia and Matthew.
So at one point they went out,
and they posed for the paparazzi.
[reporter] Julia Roberts, Matthew Perry,
and the kiss.
It's the real thing.
It's the real-life lovers
caught off guard and caught on tape.
It was just so crazy to have,
you know, a life like that.
-[fans cheering]
-Hi, guys.
[Mia] In the beginning,
I think he liked the fame…
[fans chanting]
…but at some point, it did start to shift.
[Matthew] I was extremely happy
when I got famous.
Then, after like six months,
I was like, "Uh-oh."
This didn't fix what's inside me.
This didn't do
what I thought it was gonna do.
I came from having
core negative thoughts about myself.
He would talk about that feeling
of kind of a sense of emptiness
or loneliness
that he couldn't quite fill.
It's impossible to know
where these kind of thoughts come from.
But when he was younger,
I know that it was hard for him to find
a space that he felt really secure in.
[pensive music playing]
As a kid, Matthew's mom lived in Canada,
and his dad lived in California.
So there was, like,
a lot of going back and forth
once Matthew was old enough to do that.
[Matthew] When I was five years old,
they put me on an airplane
from Montreal to Los Angeles.
[suspenseful music playing]
What they did was they put a thing
around my head
that said "Unescorted Minor."
[plane engine roaring]
And I was incredibly scared.
[Mia] I can sense
how destabilizing it could feel
and how that would add
to maybe this sense of,
"Where do I fit in all of this?"
[Matthew] The beliefs that I had were
I was too needy, I wasn't enough,
and I didn't matter.
And my whole life was about trying to have
those three things not be true.
[tires screeching]
[Marjorie] I think Matthew was searching
for something internal
to be soothed or filled,
but he was using the externals
to try to get them.
[crickets chirping]
[Matthew] At 14, I'd never drank before,
and I just sort of drank
this entire bottle.
And just was in… was in heaven.
And I thought to myself,
"This must be the way
that normal people feel all the time."
[Marjorie] Later on, I learned about
how secretive he was with the drinking,
that he would drink by himself.
Alcohol probably quieted
that very deep part of himself
that always thought he was not enough.
And I think he felt
that becoming famous would fill that hole.
[fans clamoring]
But even though he became a superstar,
there's still something in his psyche
that can't be soothed.
[Matthew] The white-hot flame of fame.
Doesn't translate to anything but that.
The old, you know, adage
that it doesn't make you happy.
[clears throat]
Just nobody believes that.
Until it happens to them,
and then they go, "Oh, right."
"What's his problem?
He's got the world by the nuts."
-Totally. You know?
-Yeah.
Um…
-Whoa.
-[Kevin laughs]
-I can ask you a question.
-All right, your turn.
Uh, who's Kevin?
-[Kevin laughs]
-[Matthew mutters indistinctly]
[crew members laughing]
[interviewer] What is your name?
What's your relationship to Matthew Perry?
Hi there, Kevin Pollak,
motion pictures, the internet.
[clicks tongue]
Uh, I guess "longtime friend"
is a term I could use.
We met on the set of Friends.
I was going to visit Courteney Cox,
who I'd done a movie with
shortly after my alleged success
from A Few Good Men.
And this was maybe year two.
So the show was insanely successful.
And Matthew and I
absolutely clicked instantly
because of a shared sense of humor.
Matthew would come up from behind me…
-Sneak up.
-…while I was talking to someone.
And whisper one of the most…
The most unrelated lines
from A Few Good Men
-that no one ever quoted.
-Yeah.
Markinson's gone.
"Markinson's gone."
What is he talking about?
Why did Matthew Perry just say that?
That's one of those movies that
I would watch just over and over again.
A line that no one knows
from A Few Good Men but Matthew Perry.
Yeah.
[mellow music playing]
I had an office at Warner Bros.
to develop a television show.
And I remember him asking me,
"Why would you want to do TV?
We all wanna do what you're doing."
But when you're talented and ambitious…
[audience cheering]
…there is no sigh of relief.
[audience applauding]
You guys all through for the season?
Have you done all the show?
Yes, we finished a couple of weeks ago.
What are you doing? Do you do movies?
Well, yeah, I'm talking about
possibly doing a movie or a--
I'm talking about it too,
but I'm not getting anything.
Yeah.
I just sit in a parking lot going,
"I'd like to do a movie, please."
[man] I met Matthew in 1995
on his first big movie, Fools Rush In.
Everybody wants a legacy.
So my legacy is that movie
because the script was based on my life.
In 1990, I went into Columbia Studios
at the time
to pitch ideas.
You know, back then you could actually
walk in and go, "Hey, dog and a cat,"
and, "Okay, we'll buy it."
And so I'm pitching, like,
really bad ideas.
And then my friend said,
"Doug, why don't you tell them about
your life?"
Everybody's like,
"What's so interesting about his life?"
And I go, well, you know,
there's a woman that, you know,
we had one or two dates,
and I hadn't seen her in some time,
knocked on the door,
and she told me she was pregnant.
And I said, "Congratulations."
And she said, "It's yours."
So we went to Vegas, like,
the next week, got married.
So after I pitched the story,
they all were like,
"Wow, it's a great story."
And, uh, so we made a deal.
And then they called me and said,
"We have exciting good news.
We wanna cast Matthew Perry to play you."
"You've got to meet him
and say it's okay."
So I went to meet Matthew
at his manager's office at the time.
Friends had just concluded
their second season.
It was the hottest show on television.
And Matthew was a big television star.
But when I first met Matthew,
he was so easy.
I mean, you would have thought
you knew the guy for a hundred years.
I'm like, "Are you kidding me? Done."
"He can portray my character."
And next thing I knew…
-[clacks]
-[jazz music playing]
…we start shooting,
and, uh, Salma Hayek was cast as my wife.
Plus I had a cameo or two.
Please, I'm probably flying over her
right now.
When did… No.
Yes, I'm playing Doug Draizin.
He's sitting right in front of me.
[cast and crew laughing]
[Doug] We shot in Vegas.
We were on the Strip a lot.
And there were people, you know,
constantly, "That's Matthew Perry."
I mean, it was like
The Matthew Perry Show.
-[Matthew] There you go.
-[child] Thank you.
I'm very… I'm very popular here in Vegas.
[tense music playing]
[Doug] Matthew had a short hiatus.
So we had only four months of production.
Everybody was a little uptight.
I saw a different side of Matthew
when I went into his trailer
to wish him luck the first day.
And he admitted how scared he was.
Come on.
He never wanted it to become
a Chandler movie.
Do it again. I'm sorry.
[Doug] He felt that this movie
was going to determine
his life, his career.
This was his shot to be taken seriously.
-Action!
-You walked out on me at 5 o'clock. Fuck.
Well, I'm sor…
Fuck.
I've worked my entire life for so…
[grunts] God!
This was not the same guy
that I had met before.
And I got a little nervous.
I remember saying to the director,
"Matthew feels the weight of the world
on his shoulders here."
Okay, you don't need to
because we just hit it. We're fine.
And he did.
I remember the problem
in one of the vital scenes
was that Matthew couldn't,
as an actor, see the transition
from getting this woman pregnant
and marrying her the next day.
What was it?
I gave him insight
into why I made the decision I did.
I told Matthew
that when I met Anna Maria's family,
the baby ended up in my arms.
And I looked at the baby,
I looked at Anna,
and I was like,
"I can't leave this."
Excuse me.
[sniffles]
[exhales deeply]
And that was my decision…
[Doug exhales deeply]
…to be a father.
[Doug crying]
How about those Mets?
Okay, now I'm better.
I truly believe that the fact that it was
a true story really helped him.
Would you mind holding her for a second
while I fix myself a plate?
Oh no, I don't think I should.
I'm not really qual… I can't.
-Okay.
-You can.
[Doug] What he brought to that scene,
you'll see if you watch the movie.
The baby's sleeping
and all of a sudden turns,
and Matthew looks at the baby,
and he actually added that, like, phew,
it was like the realization of,
"Holy mackerel,
this is about responsibility."
He stepped it up.
We got it. Yeah! Woo!
Eventually, I thought
Matthew had a lot of fun on the set…
[crew member] Take four.
…especially when it became
a family affair.
[crew member] Marker.
In the film, our dad played his dad.
Surprise!
Mom. Dad.
[both chuckling]
[Matthew] We rehearsed a scene
and then kind of caught each other's eyes
and just started, like, giggling
at how ridiculous it was
that he's playing my dad.
I wanted to call first. This was her idea.
[John Bennett Perry] I'm very proud
of how hard he works at it all.
It was great.
Until the day they shot at Lake Mead.
I wasn't there, and I wish to God I was
because during the lunch break,
Matthew got permission
to get on a jet ski,
and he flung himself in the air,
and he hurt himself.
[Matthew] I had no idea what was going on.
The doctor gave me a pill in a package
and said, "Take this
when you're done shooting."
I did, and then I felt
this incredible euphoria.
So why wouldn't I take more?
Then I started to kind of feel sick
when I wasn't taking them.
So… then you take three.
And then you take four.
Who knows what would have happened
if that accident didn't happen.
[music swells, fades]
The movie came out in '97,
and Matthew wanted it to be successful,
but he was scared.
He was nervous.
[reporter 1] Matthew Perry,
the shy Chandler from TV's Friends,
is breaking out of the confines
of the small screen and into movies.
[reporter 2] The film marks a chance
for Perry,
the latest star
of the hit television series Friends,
to make his big-screen debut,
temporarily leaving behind
the comfort of a sure thing.
[dramatic music playing]
[Doug] And then, you know,
the reviews came out.
I'm giving a thumbs up
because the two of them were charming
and also because I like the families.
[dings softly]
[Doug] So it was really exciting.
I was so proud. I couldn't believe it.
[bright music playing]
Days before the movie opened,
we got a call, like, last minute,
"Go to Chicago.
Oprah Winfrey's doing Matthew."
And we were like, "Wow, okay."
[audience cheering]
Welcome our friend Matthew Perry.
[audience cheering]
[Doug] He comes out
and big applause from everybody.
And Oprah greets him.
And she comments, she goes,
"Wow, you look… you… you look thin."
[Oprah] He's much thinner in person.
Well, TV…
For people at home,
you'll be normal size, but…
[Matthew] Yeah.
[Oprah and audience laugh]
Thanks.
Because TV makes you look bigger,
you know.
When I saw Matthew,
I was like, "This guy's very sick."
And I hadn't seen him in like four
or five months, when we did reshoots.
-[woman] Over here! Matthew!
-[fans clamoring]
[Doug] I thought
it could have been cancer.
It could have been,
you know, immune, something.
He's really sick, and it's really bad.
[photographers clamoring]
His excuse was, you know,
"I haven't gotten a lot of sleep,"
and whatever it was, it was passed over.
And, um, I never gave it another thought.
-[reporter] You've lost a little weight.
-I have a little.
-[reporter] How come? For a role?
-No real reason. Just have.
-Are they working you too hard?
-Yeah.
[foreboding music playing]
[Matthew] I made a prayer early on.
I said, "God, you can do
anything you want to me."
"Just please make me famous."
About three weeks later,
I got Friends.
But God did not forget the other part.
-[fan] Matt!
-[reporter] What are you up to right now?
Uh, doing, you know, the show,
and, uh, that's about it right now.
I really had to hide this problem.
[reporter 1] Matthew's mystery addiction.
-[reporter 2] Perry's being treated for…
-[reporter 3] …prescription painkillers.
I try to think that I'm funny.
I can't stop saying the word "funny."
This all went totally out of control.
[reporter 4] Perry is in the early stages
of chemical dependency.
Absolutely life-threatening.
[Matthew] But then it turns on you…
[paparazzo] Matthew!
[Matthew] …and says,
"Well, now I'm going to kill you."
[music swells, fades]
[mellow music playing]
[birds chirping]
[car honks]
[birds twittering]
[man] For me, there's a bizarre need
to live sort of a creative life.
I love being in a world
where I'm trying to make people laugh.
[quirky music playing]
I was auditioning for stuff.
Very exciting thing about this business
is you don't know what's gonna happen.
It's also a very difficult thing about it.
There were certainly big chunks of time
where I didn't work at all.
And when I was 24, I must've had
terrible business managers at the time
because they just called me and went,
"You have no money."
I was like,
"How about a heads-up two weeks ago?"
-[host laughs]
-Whoa!
-And, uh…
-Whoa!
And I had no idea what to do.
[pensive music playing]
I haven't prayed often.
But I… I made a prayer,
and I said, "God, you can do
anything you want to me."
"Just please make me famous."
[booming thud]
[whooshing]
About three weeks later,
my agents got me a show called LAX 2194…
God, I love my life.
…about baggage handlers
in the year 2194 at LAX.
I was the head baggage handler.
Enjoy Los Angeles.
And my job was to sort out
aliens' luggage.
Thank you.
-This was a show that…
-Mm-hmm.
-[snaps fingers]
-…I just accepted immediately.
[soft piano music playing]
And then, all of a sudden,
this wonderful script,
at the time called Friends Like Us,
came around.
And it just had a part in it
that leapt off the page,
uh, as something that was
very similar to me and had my rhythms.
-Oh my God!
-[audience laughs]
It was about a guy who…
-Ooh, I'm alive with pleasure now.
-[laughter]
[babbling]
…was sort of trying to…
Does it get better than this?
…distract everybody from how miserable
he was all the time by being funny.
[whimsical music playing]
[man] I remember hanging out,
and Matt was talking about
wanting the Friends pilot,
because he thought that would be
the one that would change his life.
I do remember that he said,
"Somebody has written a script."
"This is me."
Chandler's definitely him.
And I kept calling my agents, going,
"I don't think the baggage handler show
is gonna get picked up."
-"You've got to get me in on this."
-"Can I go read for this?"
He was calling our dad,
like, all the time,
talking to him about, "What should I do?"
"How do I get off of this hold?"
And, you know, there was just…
there was a lot of tension
and buildup in the house around it.
[sweeping music playing]
[Matthew] And then one day,
I got a phone call that said, you know,
"You're gonna be very happy. You have
an audition for Friends on Wednesday."
[radio presenter] Glendale at 84,
Van Nuys to 93, Woodland Hills to 94…
[Roger] I took him to that audition.
We worked in the car
and just, like, go over the sides.
And he was super excited about it.
[rising orchestral music playing]
We had been casting this show
for a couple of months.
There was anxiety,
because all of the casting
was fairly easy,
except for the role of Chandler.
They couldn't find a Chandler.
And so, with all the excitement, was…
[music rises, stops]
…"Holy shit, where's Chandler Bing?"
And then,
Matthew Perry came into the room.
[music restarts]
[door slams loudly]
He did a couple of scenes.
Hi. Um… [clears throat]
Okay, next word would be,
uh, Chandler.
[nervous chuckle]
Chandler is my name and, uh…
[clears throat] Hi.
I was leaning forward.
Could you want her more?
That is so not true.
Okay, rock, hard place, me.
I couldn't get enough. I wanted more.
-Yes.
-[audience laughing]
[Warren] It took less than 30 seconds
to feel the…
"Oh yeah, this is it."
"This is… this is Chandler."
[Matthew] This was a job I really wanted
so I was checking my messages
like a freak of nature.
And no message. I thought it was gone.
[tense music playing]
I was sitting at the table
with my parents, and the phone rang.
Of course, like, the landline rings.
My dad hops up and runs to the phone,
picks up the phone.
You hear him quiet for a second,
and then he goes, "Yes!"
Like, it's super loud.
And then, "He got it!"
And everyone, we were just…
My mom and I were sitting at the table,
like, "Oh my God!"
He said he got it.
And I remember,
I was not surprised that he got the part.
I got that message, and then it was just…
-[snaps fingers]
-…life changed, and I, um…
You know, I was with a friend of mine,
so I, you know, basically screamed,
-"I got it!"
-[woman laughing]
And then said,
"I'm way too big to hang out with you."
-And got out of there.
-[laughter]
-[Matt LeBlanc laughing]
-[audience applauding]
[cymbal crashes faintly, music ends]
-[director] 33B, take three, marker.
-[rolling tongue]
[rapid clapperboard claps]
-[director] And clear.
-[chuckles softly]
[footsteps receding]
[inhales, exhales deeply]
[softly] Okay. Hm.
[reporter] Mia, why are you sharing
your story today?
Yeah, um…
Hmm.
[inhales softly]
Ever since Matthew
became Matthew Perry…
[chuckles]
…um, I was always really afraid of,
and really skeptical of, ever talking to
really anybody about…
my experience with him or…
And there's certainly been
a lot of opportunities.
[pensive music playing]
But I have a lot to say about
what happened.
Yeah, all great stories
have comedy and tragedy in them.
And that certainly was Matthew's story.
And, um…
[soft clicking]
And I'm just imagining his face right now
in his prime…
[music stops]
…when none of the bad stuff
had started happening quite yet.
[foreboding music playing]
[Matthew] I love the process of acting.
Between action and cut,
it's kind of you're in heaven.
You know, there's… there's a sort of
magic element of why people laugh.
[audience laughing]
[Roger] I always thought of Matthew Perry
as one of the funniest guys ever.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! Woof, woof!
[Roger] I never had any doubt
that he would be successful.
Yeah.
[melodramatic violin music playing]
My name is Roger Castillo.
And, uh, Matthew has been my best friend
for most of my life.
We met in Los Angeles in '87.
I'm pretty sure
Matt was around 17 years old.
And I was
three or four years older than him.
So he wasn't famous yet.
It had been about a year
after I moved from Miami to Los Angeles.
And I think
I was just doing odd jobs then.
I was, you know… I was young
and just trying to get settled in,
you know.
Matthew always said, "You, me,
and David Pressman are going to be
three sarcastic, bitter old men
on a park bench for sure."
The three of us were, like, inseparable.
My name is David Pressman.
And, uh, I was Matthew's buddy for…
[inhales deeply]
…about 40 years.
Back then, we were young and having fun.
And we were at the Formosa all the time.
Matt would always say that
the Formosa Cafe
is where we went to college.
This place is legendary.
I mean, it's right next
to Warner Bros. Hollywood,
and Elvis Presley, Clark Gable,
everybody frequented that bar.
['90s pop music playing]
[David] We would walk in there,
and we would know everybody
at every booth.
It was just really
our home away from home.
[Roger] The bartender was an old guy,
like straight out
of an old James Cagney movie.
He was like, "What are you guys having,
you movie stars?"
[David] We loved sitting in the corner.
That was the big booth.
You know, just holding court.
[Roger] There was me, Matthew,
David Pressman, and Hank Azaria.
And the waitresses, like,
they knew exactly what our drinks were.
We probably drank a little too much
those nights.
But we were just looking to have fun
and laugh.
[quirky music playing]
All we ever did was speak in questions.
That was our whole thing.
If a girl was attractive,
we would go, "Is she hot?"
And if you ask that question,
"Is she hot?" that means she's hot.
And then we would shorten the words.
"Is she hot?" later became "shot."
It was just like, "Shot!"
Uh, really loud, yeah.
When a situation was awkward,
Matt would just yell, "Goot!"
which meant,
"This is terrible, let's get out."
There was a goot face.
I can't even do it now.
Like that.
[Roger] You'll see in a lot of pictures,
it was just stretching our mouth.
It was always making each other laugh.
We loved the same shows, the same movies.
We were in movie theaters all the time.
And then, after the movie lets out,
there's like 30 people in the bathroom,
and then one of us would be in the stall,
and they would be like, "Ow, it burns!"
Good, I'm so glad Roger shared all this.
[yowling]
[chuckles] You know.
You know, things like that.
[David] One of the first cars Matthew had
was a tiny red Miata,
which are convertible cars.
Bright red.
I would drive with him,
and, uh, he would be blaring Enya.
["Orinoco Flow" by Enya playing]
Sail away, sail away, sail away… ♪
[David] So we'd be driving down
Sunset Boulevard.
People would be driving by us like,
"Look at these nerds."
Girls would be driving by us giggling,
and I'm like, "Dude, please change this."
He goes, "Yeah, you're right."
And then he'd change it,
and he'd put in John Tesh.
[energetic music playing]
I'd be like, "Oh, for fuck's sake,
this is not helping."
[Roger] We were so immature
and so ridiculous.
And we were trying to meet girls,
and Matt would be friends with girls
that he had crushes on.
He had a crush on this girl, Marjorie.
[chuckling]
He had this sort of persona of,
"I never get the girl."
"But when I'm famous,
I'll get all the girls."
[soft jazz music playing]
I met Matthew in 1987.
We were both young actors
living in Los Angeles.
There was a group of us,
and everybody was sort of searching
for a sense of belonging in this big city
and a sense of home.
And friends became family.
Hank and Matt lived in the same building,
and a few blocks away, I had a house.
So they started coming to the house
pretty much every day,
every night after auditions.
And drinking was part of the fun.
We played a lot of games,
truth or dare,
spin the bottle.
And at the time,
Matthew had a crush on me.
But I just wasn't interested in dating.
It became an ongoing routine
for Matthew to keep trying.
[chuckling]
It wasn't subtle.
It wasn't nuanced. It wasn't a hint.
It was, "Is tonight the night
we're gonna make out?"
[chuckling]
One night, we were at my house,
I think playing I Never all night.
[chuckles]
And, um, there was drinking.
And at the end of the night,
he wanted to know if I wanted to come
to his place, go home with him.
And, um, that was a night
where he wore me down for the first time.
[laughs] I thought I was open to it.
We got into the car.
[tires screeching]
We were driving to his house,
and a car smashed into the backseat.
[loud crash]
[pensive music playing]
Matthew started right away yelling.
He was, like, very upset.
And I looked at him and said,
"It wasn't his fault.
You ran a red light."
And he was horrified.
He was horrified. He was like, "Oh no."
Matthew was drunk.
And, um, I think about it differently now
than I did at the time.
After that accident,
I don't think, uh, either one of us
was feeling terribly romantic.
And, um, that was the end
of any potential romantic relationship
at that point.
But Matthew and I became
very close friends.
But it took a while to learn
and to make sense
of what Matthew's upbringing was.
It was like a jigsaw puzzle.
[pensive music playing]
[Mia] Growing up,
Matthew had two different families
because his mom and dad split
when he was a baby.
[Matthew] I grew up for the most part
with just my mother.
Then she got married
when I was, I guess, 11 to Keith Morrison…
NBC News at This Hour, I'm Keith Morrison.
[Matthew] …the NBC anchorman.
[Mia] When he was a teenager,
Matthew's mom and his stepdad
had four children.
And then my mom and our father
got married in 1981.
And then I was born
when Matthew was about 14.
That's all the Perrys.
There they all are.
[photographs rustle]
And here's Dad.
[Matthew] My father's an actor.
He's been in the business a long time.
He was the Old Spice guy.
And my father lived in Los Angeles.
But I lived in Canada with my mother.
The only way I'd get to see my father
on a regular basis was on television.
He'd call up and say, "I'm on this show."
[shot fired]
So I'd be glued to my set watching him,
and I was like, "Great, I get to see Dad."
Your heart can't tell you what to do.
Your gut tells you.
[Matthew] I think I generated kind of
a respect for the business that way.
I went down to Los Angeles.
He did a show called 240-Robert.
[Mia] Matty, did, like, one episode
with our dad.
-Are you a doctor?
-No, my partner and I are paramedics.
What's a paramedic?
I'm pretty sure
from there on out he was hooked.
[Matthew] This is how
I kind of learned about acting.
But in school,
I was getting in trouble for, you know,
trying to be the class clown.
[Mia] He knew that he was funny
really early on in life
and knew that when he made people laugh,
it made him feel good.
He would make some kind of joke
or do some sort of bit.
It was like, "If everyone's laughing,
everything's gonna be okay."
[Matthew] Boy, did I make people laugh.
And I realized that if I have potential
of making money at it,
I should try to do that.
And then he started doing all sorts
of work and stuff in LA as a teenager.
[Roger] He took his acting and his comedy
very serious.
He would often go to coaches
and acting teachers,
and… and he did improv.
[Matthew] I did improv comedy for a while,
which is about eight people doing
different scene work that have no scripts.
[suspenseful music]
[improv actor] The next guest is a fellow
by the name of Jack Savage.
-How are you?
-No, no.
Jacques Sauvage, shh.
-Jacques Sauvage. So how are you today?
-Nah, nah, nah, nah.
Jacques Sauvage, shh.
Wait, let me try this one more time.
I'm enjoying this.
-Jacques Sauvage, shh.
-Shh.
-That's it.
-[stifled laugh]
[David] We were young actors.
Roger wasn't a young actor,
but Matthew and I were young actors
and, you know, Hank.
We just wanted to be working.
Uh, it was cool to be an actor.
This is actually gonna be like
a scene in a big film.
[Marjorie] What we had in common was
we were big dreamers,
and we were ambitious,
but we were pursuing it with a vengeance.
[pensive music playing]
[Roger] Back then, he didn't like
the little Honda CRX he had.
I had the nicer car.
And so I would go pick him up,
and we'd go to auditions.
[mic rustling]
Could I have less clue
as to how this works?
-[man] Do you want to sit down there?
-No, I have to…
Well, let's practice this first.
I remember taking him
to the Dead Poets Society
and, I believe, School Ties.
[clears throat]
Is that?
Those were ones
that he just, like, worked so hard on
and wanted so badly,
but he didn't get them.
Am I gonna do this again
because that sucked?
Every time you don't get a job,
it's either, "Okay, well, I gotta quit,"
or it fuels the fire to prove them wrong.
And then he was discovered
by a director named William Richert.
[Matthew] One day I was at a restaurant
in the Valley.
Now, let me just share something with you.
I was sitting at a table
with three cute girls.
I was trying to make them laugh,
and I was sort of all performey.
-Do you want to hear it?
-[girl] Yes!
[Matthew] Okay.
And I got a note from a, uh, waitress
that said that this director was in
and he wants you to be in his next movie.
I immediately thought, even at the time,
that this movie will probably be shot
in the back of this guy's van.
[Kevin laughs]
But I made a few phone calls.
It was a real movie called
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.
The director saw something special in him.
[Matthew] I got that movie,
to play River Phoenix's best friend.
-Stop here.
-I don't like this neighborhood.
Pull over.
That place is loaded with college girls.
[Roger] They were so opposite.
Matt was, you know, a red-meat-eating,
you know, charbroiled cheeseburger.
And River was just eating plants.
We didn't even know what a vegan was.
And then he would just tell us
what a vegan was,
and I was like, "That sounds awful."
But they really did have
a great admiration for each other.
[Matthew] I was in Chicago for two months.
-Greatest time in the world.
-[Kevin] That's fantastic!
It would have been a better story
if anybody'd seen the movie.
[chuckles] No. It would just have been
a different story.
[Matthew] That was how it started for me,
and I got my first, uh, television show
when I was 18.
[pensive music playing]
[man] I met Matthew Perry
when we tested in a chemistry read
for a series called Boys Will Be Boys.
We hit it off immediately.
Then we had a publicity photo shoot,
and Matthew Perry was not too happy
when he had to sit next to me…
[laughs]
…with my shirt off.
[theme song playing]
Boys Will Be Boys was about the exploits
of Chazz and Booch.
-Chazz Matazz.
-Booch!
I'm the Booch, this Fonz type character.
There's no chance
you're intimidated by her, is there?
Matthew played the role of Chazz.
It is to laugh.
[laughs sarcastically]
[Billy] We were two kids
running around chasing girls.
[audience cheers, exclaims]
[host] I have a Teen Beat magazine
right over here,
is Matthew in his own handwriting.
-[man laughing]
-[Matthew chuckles]
[host] You can get Matthew's handwriting
if you get Teen Beat.
[Matthew] If you can read it.
-[host] Huh?
-[Billy laughing]
-How do you guys get along?
-Great.
You're kinda like the street kid,
and he's the California kid.
I mean, how does that work?
Uh, we're kinda now
the California street kids.
-[host laughs]
-I don't know. We're getting along great.
[Billy] And our job was to figure out
how to make people laugh.
You know, where's the joke?
When it comes to girls,
you make Hugh Hefner look like a monk.
[laughter]
[Billy] And Matthew was so talented.
Because I'd read the script,
but then we'd go to rehearsals,
and then I'd see what Matt
would do with the script.
Let's go. Remember, act natural.
[scoffs]
[quirky music playing]
[audience laughing]
I mean, I was literally in tears because
I had no idea what he was gonna do.
[loud cheering and laughing]
You…
[Billy] He was willing
to throw himself around.
You know, I meant to do that.
The thing with Matt was
he always needed to get the laugh.
And I could see, like,
if his joke did not get a laugh,
or I got a bigger laugh,
that it would put him
in a bit of a tailspin, you know?
Which was tough.
[pensive music playing]
Eventually, the show got canceled.
We were both bummed, devastated.
You know, there goes our TV show.
But for a young actor with a dream,
you have to keep trying to make it.
And I'd see Matt on different shows,
you know, guest-starring on the show.
[Kevin] Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons.
Growing Pains.
-And Who's the Boss?
-[Matthew] Yes.
Okay, so I want to hear
at least nine minutes of struggle
somewhere in here.
The struggling, you know, not too long,
and then, one day, I got a phone call,
and I instantly knew
my whole life was gonna change.
[music swells gently]
[Warren] Audiences come
to their televisions for warmth…
-[audience laughing]
-…and relationships and entertainment.
They want it. They need that.
My name is Warren Littlefield,
and I was the president
of NBC Entertainment
when we developed Friends.
In the early '90s,
at NBC, we asked ourselves,
"What do we want to make
that has you racing home to watch it?"
And in late '93,
Marta Kauffman and David Crane came in
and said, "We have a show."
Marta and David, who were friends,
had some experience in television,
but not a lot.
The show was from their lives
and their experience
as twentysomethings in New York.
And it had authenticity.
And it was, like, wet-your-pants funny.
[adventurous music playing]
We loved it. So we made a deal.
And then Marta and David brought together
an amazing staff of writers.
I was in love with storytelling
kind of my whole life.
And I decided to move out to LA
to try and get into movies or television.
I remember getting
the Friends pilot script
and just said, "Oh my God, it's fantastic.
There's really something here."
Like, I want to be with these people.
I want to write about these people.
And Marta and David believed
that every story has to mean something.
And we had, you know,
six characters to tell stories about.
[Warren] And then we started
the casting process.
It was a search
for twentysomethings.
Jennifer was someone
who we'd worked with before.
She did some bad shows.
One night I was filling up my car
at the gas station on Sunset,
and at the other island was Jennifer.
And she came over,
and she goes, "Hi," you know,
"Is it ever going to happen for me?"
[sighs] I said,
"We love you. We believe in you."
And then she auditioned for Friends.
Lives would change in that casting room.
And for Friends,
Chandler was the last one cast.
[light music playing]
And then finally Matthew Perry came in.
I was very familiar with the script
and very familiar with the character,
because a lot of my friends
had been calling and saying,
"There's this guy on this show
that is you."
"Can you help me with the audition?"
So much so that I knew all the material
when I went in.
Oh, right. You knew if I could just get in
the room, I could so own this.
[Warren] And then he just nailed it.
And it was just like,
"Where's this guy been?"
On Wednesday,
I auditioned for Marta Kauffman.
On Thursday, I read for the studio.
On Friday, I read for the network.
And we started on Monday.
-So…
-That's crazy.
Yeah, that's how fast it all happened.
[Warren] Now we had a young,
exciting cast.
And then you go to a table read,
and anything can happen
at a table reading.
[power switch clicks]
There's a big, enormous table
with the cast sitting around that.
Network is there.
And everyone on the production side
is there.
And the writers.
[Jeff] As a writer,
you're writing a character,
you're imagining a character.
What you want is somebody
who takes what you wrote,
as perfect as it can be,
and makes it into something more.
[Warren] We had cast
all six actors individually.
We had never heard or seen
anybody together.
And so we're bringing
all these hopes and expectations.
And then they proceed to read that script.
[bright music playing]
[Courteney as Monica] This is not
even a date.
It's just two people going out to dinner
and not having sex.
[Matthew as Chandler] Sounds like a date
to me.
It was wildly entertaining.
And they had this chemistry.
[Jennifer as Rachel] So, like, you guys
all have jobs?
[Courteney as Monica] Yeah,
we all have jobs.
See, that's how we buy stuff.
You could feel this wonderful,
functioning, miraculous sparkle
between the cast members.
[Matthew] There wasn't a weak link.
I'd gotten past my ego mistake
of wanting to be the only funny person.
You know, when that happens,
when you're watching some castmate
be really funny,
and that angers you or something.
-I used to have that big-time.
-[Kevin] Sure.
But I'd been in enough failed TV shows
to know that that's not the attitude.
[mellow music playing]
[Warren] We wanted to see this young cast
navigate the world together.
[Courteney as Monica]
Welcome to the real world.
It sucks. You're gonna love it.
We had high hopes off of the table read.
So we made the pilot.
-[switch clicks]
-[audience cheers, applauds]
We taped in front of a live audience.
[crew member] Quiet please. Standby.
I did go to the first taping
and remember sitting in the stands.
[chuckles] And I remember
Matthew caught my eye in the stands.
I just heard him,
like he's mouthing, "Is it funny?"
And I was like, "Yeah, it's funny."
We believed in it,
but it's also a bit scary
because you're in new territory.
[music stops]
[musical chime]
[ambient city noise]
[musical chime]
[woman] When Friends premiered in 1994,
on September 22nd,
it premiered at 8:30.
So it was between Mad About You
and Seinfeld.
[mellow music playing]
It really was the most important
broadcast time slot.
[Warren] Friends premiered.
And what I like to do in New York is
I work at my office till fairly late,
and then I would go for a walk
on the streets of New York
to spy on people's windows
and see what they were watching.
I remember that Thursday night in '94,
people were watching.
["I'll Be There for You"
by the Rembrandts playing]
[Mia] We definitely watched the pilot.
This is not even a date.
It's just two people going out to dinner
and not having sex.
Sounds like a date to me.
[audience laughs]
And I remember
just how sweet and funny it was.
I just want to be married again.
[audience laughs]
And I just want a million dollars!
Everybody fell in love with them
immediately, including us.
Okay, everybody, this is Rachel.
This is everybody.
This is Chandler and Phoebe and Joey.
It was brilliantly written.
I mean, the jokes were just nonstop.
-You remember my brother, Ross?
-Sure.
-Hey.
-Hi.
[Rachel gasps]
[Mary] It was sometimes very physical.
Once I was a wooden boy
A little wooden boy ♪
The delivery was always dead-on.
Whoa, this is a Dear Diary moment.
[Mary] There was kind of like
an I Love Lucy energy to it.
-Hey, Pheebs, you want to help?
-I wish I could, but I don't want to.
Because it had such a large ensemble,
everybody could find their humor
somewhere.
I honestly don't know
if I'm hungry or horny.
Then stay out of my freezer.
Watching it, I think I did actually say
to my husband at the time,
"This is gonna be a huge hit."
[dramatic music playing]
[Jeff] I will remember forever
the first table read
after the pilot aired.
James Burrows, our director,
asked the cast when they walked in,
"Has anyone been to a shopping mall?"
Because the show premiered,
and millions and millions of people
watched that first episode.
And what he was acknowledging was
your lives have changed forever.
-[camera operator] Rolling!
-[director] Action.
As we were shooting Friends,
we would watch the ratings.
Were we tied with
or beating Mad About You?
Were we tied with or beating Seinfeld?
But also just stunned and shocked
at… at what the response would be.
[reporter 1] This brand-new show
going on NBC…
[reporter 2] Thursday night show, Friends,
it's become quite a hit this season.
[Warren] Our little child was walking.
Not running, not skipping, but it was
like, "This is good. This is good."
And we continued to keep pushing.
[Jeff] To those of us
in the writers' room,
you're asking yourself on a daily basis,
"How are we going to maintain,
exceed, improve,
grow, do more, do better, keep this up?"
[upbeat music playing]
Matthew and I would hang out
and talk comedy.
And I remember
he had this enthusiasm and passion
for what made something really funny.
He studied Jerry Lewis and Jackie Gleason.
He loved Chevy Chase.
No problem.
[laughing and cheering]
[Roger] And Dick Van Dyke.
[comedic piano sting]
These are all huge
physical-comedy people, you know?
And then he made it his.
[telephone rings]
Hello. Hello.
-Bah!
-[both shriek]
[drawer rattles, thuds]
[Jeff] Matthew had this miraculous ability
to take what we wrote,
let it be ours…
[audience exclaiming]
…but also make it be his
in a way that made it more.
For… Flannin…
[breathes heavily]
[Jeff] Matthew took whatever we imagined
and put it someplace we had not imagined.
[audience laughs]
It was creative and exciting
and a fun place to go to work every day…
[bright music playing]
…because everybody was funny.
The whole reason to be there
was to try to think of the funniest thing
to do that day.
That's a world
that I want to be involved in.
[Jeff] Our job was to care deeply
about imaginary people.
I loved writing for Chandler.
It's the next day.
How needy do I want to seem?
[Jeff] Chandler was bristly and sarcastic.
-I got her machine.
-Her answering machine?
No, interestingly enough,
her leaf blower picked up.
And would poke at his own
and other people's weak points.
-You don't think that makes me seem…
-Desperate, needy, pathetic.
[audience laughs]
Ah, you obviously saw my personal ad.
Matthew's relationship to that character
was pretty strong.
Um, for all kinds of good reasons.
There was this overwhelming pool
of visible vulnerability
in both Matthew and the character.
Filling silences with jokes and struggling
in his relationships with women.
Yes, back then, I, uh, used humor
as a defense mechanism.
Thank God I don't do that anymore.
I think he honestly owned those
in real life and on TV.
I think that came out of me,
uh, coming to the set
and saying to the producers
how awkward me asking girls out
had gotten in my life
-and how nervous I was.
-[Jennifer chuckles]
They said, "Well, you know what,
that'll be funny."
"We'll take advantage
of that horrible thing in your own life."
[Jennifer laughs]
"And put it on national television
for millions of people to see."
[Matt LeBlanc guffaws]
But the story for Chandler
that was really meaningful
for understanding the character, um,
was that Chandler got locked
in an ATM vestibule with a supermodel,
uh, with Jill Goodacre.
Oh my God, it's her.
It's that Victoria's Secret model.
[Jeff] And what that did
was allow us to play
the majority of that episode
with him not speaking
because he was, understandably,
uh, too nervous to speak
to this unbelievably beautiful woman.
And so we got to play
Chandler's experience of this physically
and as internal monologue.
You know, on second thought,
gum would be perfection.
Gum would be perfection?
Gum would be perfection.
Could have said,
"Gum would be nice. I'll have a stick."
But no, no, no, no, no.
For me, gum is perfection.
I loathe myself.
And watching him struggle in that moment
was one of the most powerful revelations
of both Matthew as an actor,
but also of the character of Chandler.
And because it gave us a chance
to hear the voices in his head
that he hears all the time.
Would you like to call somebody?
Yeah, about 300 guys
I went to high school with.
[laughter]
We were working
between six and seven days a week
and from early in the morning
until very late at night every day.
But then the audiences,
when they would come for the show,
went from being curious and delighted
to being fanatical very quickly.
[Mia] At the tapings, there would just be
lines and lines and lines of people,
and they're just so excited about it.
It was a complete phenomenon.
It was amazing.
[fan] Here we go, we're going in.
[Mia] And there's cameras going.
It reminds us of the way we act.
It's got a great wit.
-Hilarious…
-We love the characters.
[chuckles] My favorite is Chandler.
[Mia] We'd all get to sit in the audience,
but we would definitely go backstage.
I remember Jennifer Aniston and
Courteney Cox wanting to play with my hair
and being like,
"Oh, the little sister's here."
And I was so insanely proud of Matthew.
[applause]
[Warren] The cast had this feeling
of like, "Us? This is happening to us?"
And you'd have Matthew with like,
"Of course this is happening."
[applause]
[bright music playing]
During the second season,
I was shopping at a mall,
and I just saw
Friends merchandise everywhere.
And everywhere I went,
I would just see his big face.
Well, that's when it hit me.
Friends was everywhere.
The theme song was on Billboard charts.
Everybody wanted the Rachel haircut.
People were picking up on Chandler's,
like, you know,
"Could this be more awkward?"
Could she be more out of my league?
Could you want her more?
-That is so not true.
-[laughs]
Chandler became
one of the most beloved characters,
and that was absolutely
because of Matthew Perry.
[man] Favorite friend, Matthew Perry.
He's been building for a while,
he's very funny,
gets the most laughs on the show,
so he's on the rise, without a doubt.
[rapid cymbal hits]
All of a sudden, everybody knew his name.
[Jay Leno] Matthew Perry, folks.
Welcome, Matthew.
[audience cheering]
Matthew Perry, ladies and gentlemen.
[Jon Stewart] Please welcome
Matthew Perry.
[Mia] Matty got to go on
all of the late night talk shows.
-What have you done to my audience?
-Hi.
Extremely hot right now.
[David Letterman] Friends is currently
the number one show on television.
Is this your first huge television hit?
Uh, yes. This is the first one
that anyone but my mom has watched.
-So, uh…
-It must be going great for you?
Matthew went from being
like a guy I would hang out with…
[man] Mr. Perry, Mr. LeBlanc!
…to being a guy who was not so available
to hang out with anymore.
I wasn't mad at it. I understood it.
And he leaned into it.
-[fan 1] Hey, Matt!
-[fan 2] Matt!
[fans clamoring]
[Roger] All this adoration he got,
and love,
and people wanting to take a picture
and an autograph,
and just his level of fame was insane.
Matthew Perry. There you go.
It was exciting and a massive, massive
life shift moment for our whole family.
Anytime I was with him,
we would get followed by paparazzi
and get our picture taken too.
And all of a sudden,
this is our new reality.
-[paparazzo] Matthew…
-Hey.
…now that you have a hit show
you're still gonna talk to us?
-Yes.
-Hey, great. Congratulations on the show.
-Thank you.
-You deserve it.
He would make jokes of,
"Oh, I'm so famous,"
and "how rich he is" jokes.
He liked cars, and he liked homes.
Come on in. I'll show you my house.
This is the living room area.
As you can see,
I haven't, uh, quite finished.
This is my favorite area of the house
right here.
I don't know what this area is for.
I haven't quite figured this out.
Matthew was always incredibly generous
with his money.
Like, for Christmas, when I was 15,
when we were coming out from dinner,
the valet drives up
in a red Ford Mustang convertible,
and the valet guy gets out of the car
with the keys in his hand and goes,
"Maria Perry, is Maria Perry here?"
And I was like, "Wait, what?"
And Matthew goes,
"Yeah, that is your car. Merry Christmas."
[festive music playing]
Success did bring in a lot of access
to joy and fun and adventure.
-Do you know where the Playboy Mansion is?
-[David] No idea.
Matthew and I would get invited
to the, uh, Playboy Mansion a lot.
[Matthew] All right, Playboy Mansion.
[David] I remember walking in,
and the first thing we saw was
Corey Feldman and a Playmate
versus Scott Baio and a Playmate
in volleyball.
And I was like, "I have arrived."
Hi, how are you?
[David] He did well with girls.
Uh, girls loved him.
[Matthew] How you doing?
[David] He knew how to charm them.
[Matthew] Oh, okay.
-Well, who are you?
-My name's Matthew.
-You're cute. Matthew what?
-She thinks I'm cute.
I think he's adorable.
[Jeff] He basically had become that guy
who really, I think, was the guy
in the ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre
to a guy who was fighting women off.
[indistinct chatter]
Who are you dating?
I'm, uh…
I'm dating a woman named,
uh, Julia Roberts.
[reporter] Roberts has been dating
Friends star Matthew Perry
ever since she guest-starred on his show.
How could you still be upset about that?
Why don't you call me in 20 years
and tell me
if you're still upset about this.
[Roger] At that time,
she was just like as big as you can be.
But I was like, "God, my friend is dating
Julia Roberts. That's insane."
[David] There was one time
we were watching football.
They said, "Hey, Julia Roberts
is gonna come by to bring us pizza."
I'm like, "Yeah, cool.
Julia Roberts bringing us pizza."
So she came.
The paparazzi were all outside
wanting to get the very first picture
of Julia and Matthew.
So at one point they went out,
and they posed for the paparazzi.
[reporter] Julia Roberts, Matthew Perry,
and the kiss.
It's the real thing.
It's the real-life lovers
caught off guard and caught on tape.
It was just so crazy to have,
you know, a life like that.
-[fans cheering]
-Hi, guys.
[Mia] In the beginning,
I think he liked the fame…
[fans chanting]
…but at some point, it did start to shift.
[Matthew] I was extremely happy
when I got famous.
Then, after like six months,
I was like, "Uh-oh."
This didn't fix what's inside me.
This didn't do
what I thought it was gonna do.
I came from having
core negative thoughts about myself.
He would talk about that feeling
of kind of a sense of emptiness
or loneliness
that he couldn't quite fill.
It's impossible to know
where these kind of thoughts come from.
But when he was younger,
I know that it was hard for him to find
a space that he felt really secure in.
[pensive music playing]
As a kid, Matthew's mom lived in Canada,
and his dad lived in California.
So there was, like,
a lot of going back and forth
once Matthew was old enough to do that.
[Matthew] When I was five years old,
they put me on an airplane
from Montreal to Los Angeles.
[suspenseful music playing]
What they did was they put a thing
around my head
that said "Unescorted Minor."
[plane engine roaring]
And I was incredibly scared.
[Mia] I can sense
how destabilizing it could feel
and how that would add
to maybe this sense of,
"Where do I fit in all of this?"
[Matthew] The beliefs that I had were
I was too needy, I wasn't enough,
and I didn't matter.
And my whole life was about trying to have
those three things not be true.
[tires screeching]
[Marjorie] I think Matthew was searching
for something internal
to be soothed or filled,
but he was using the externals
to try to get them.
[crickets chirping]
[Matthew] At 14, I'd never drank before,
and I just sort of drank
this entire bottle.
And just was in… was in heaven.
And I thought to myself,
"This must be the way
that normal people feel all the time."
[Marjorie] Later on, I learned about
how secretive he was with the drinking,
that he would drink by himself.
Alcohol probably quieted
that very deep part of himself
that always thought he was not enough.
And I think he felt
that becoming famous would fill that hole.
[fans clamoring]
But even though he became a superstar,
there's still something in his psyche
that can't be soothed.
[Matthew] The white-hot flame of fame.
Doesn't translate to anything but that.
The old, you know, adage
that it doesn't make you happy.
[clears throat]
Just nobody believes that.
Until it happens to them,
and then they go, "Oh, right."
"What's his problem?
He's got the world by the nuts."
-Totally. You know?
-Yeah.
Um…
-Whoa.
-[Kevin laughs]
-I can ask you a question.
-All right, your turn.
Uh, who's Kevin?
-[Kevin laughs]
-[Matthew mutters indistinctly]
[crew members laughing]
[interviewer] What is your name?
What's your relationship to Matthew Perry?
Hi there, Kevin Pollak,
motion pictures, the internet.
[clicks tongue]
Uh, I guess "longtime friend"
is a term I could use.
We met on the set of Friends.
I was going to visit Courteney Cox,
who I'd done a movie with
shortly after my alleged success
from A Few Good Men.
And this was maybe year two.
So the show was insanely successful.
And Matthew and I
absolutely clicked instantly
because of a shared sense of humor.
Matthew would come up from behind me…
-Sneak up.
-…while I was talking to someone.
And whisper one of the most…
The most unrelated lines
from A Few Good Men
-that no one ever quoted.
-Yeah.
Markinson's gone.
"Markinson's gone."
What is he talking about?
Why did Matthew Perry just say that?
That's one of those movies that
I would watch just over and over again.
A line that no one knows
from A Few Good Men but Matthew Perry.
Yeah.
[mellow music playing]
I had an office at Warner Bros.
to develop a television show.
And I remember him asking me,
"Why would you want to do TV?
We all wanna do what you're doing."
But when you're talented and ambitious…
[audience cheering]
…there is no sigh of relief.
[audience applauding]
You guys all through for the season?
Have you done all the show?
Yes, we finished a couple of weeks ago.
What are you doing? Do you do movies?
Well, yeah, I'm talking about
possibly doing a movie or a--
I'm talking about it too,
but I'm not getting anything.
Yeah.
I just sit in a parking lot going,
"I'd like to do a movie, please."
[man] I met Matthew in 1995
on his first big movie, Fools Rush In.
Everybody wants a legacy.
So my legacy is that movie
because the script was based on my life.
In 1990, I went into Columbia Studios
at the time
to pitch ideas.
You know, back then you could actually
walk in and go, "Hey, dog and a cat,"
and, "Okay, we'll buy it."
And so I'm pitching, like,
really bad ideas.
And then my friend said,
"Doug, why don't you tell them about
your life?"
Everybody's like,
"What's so interesting about his life?"
And I go, well, you know,
there's a woman that, you know,
we had one or two dates,
and I hadn't seen her in some time,
knocked on the door,
and she told me she was pregnant.
And I said, "Congratulations."
And she said, "It's yours."
So we went to Vegas, like,
the next week, got married.
So after I pitched the story,
they all were like,
"Wow, it's a great story."
And, uh, so we made a deal.
And then they called me and said,
"We have exciting good news.
We wanna cast Matthew Perry to play you."
"You've got to meet him
and say it's okay."
So I went to meet Matthew
at his manager's office at the time.
Friends had just concluded
their second season.
It was the hottest show on television.
And Matthew was a big television star.
But when I first met Matthew,
he was so easy.
I mean, you would have thought
you knew the guy for a hundred years.
I'm like, "Are you kidding me? Done."
"He can portray my character."
And next thing I knew…
-[clacks]
-[jazz music playing]
…we start shooting,
and, uh, Salma Hayek was cast as my wife.
Plus I had a cameo or two.
Please, I'm probably flying over her
right now.
When did… No.
Yes, I'm playing Doug Draizin.
He's sitting right in front of me.
[cast and crew laughing]
[Doug] We shot in Vegas.
We were on the Strip a lot.
And there were people, you know,
constantly, "That's Matthew Perry."
I mean, it was like
The Matthew Perry Show.
-[Matthew] There you go.
-[child] Thank you.
I'm very… I'm very popular here in Vegas.
[tense music playing]
[Doug] Matthew had a short hiatus.
So we had only four months of production.
Everybody was a little uptight.
I saw a different side of Matthew
when I went into his trailer
to wish him luck the first day.
And he admitted how scared he was.
Come on.
He never wanted it to become
a Chandler movie.
Do it again. I'm sorry.
[Doug] He felt that this movie
was going to determine
his life, his career.
This was his shot to be taken seriously.
-Action!
-You walked out on me at 5 o'clock. Fuck.
Well, I'm sor…
Fuck.
I've worked my entire life for so…
[grunts] God!
This was not the same guy
that I had met before.
And I got a little nervous.
I remember saying to the director,
"Matthew feels the weight of the world
on his shoulders here."
Okay, you don't need to
because we just hit it. We're fine.
And he did.
I remember the problem
in one of the vital scenes
was that Matthew couldn't,
as an actor, see the transition
from getting this woman pregnant
and marrying her the next day.
What was it?
I gave him insight
into why I made the decision I did.
I told Matthew
that when I met Anna Maria's family,
the baby ended up in my arms.
And I looked at the baby,
I looked at Anna,
and I was like,
"I can't leave this."
Excuse me.
[sniffles]
[exhales deeply]
And that was my decision…
[Doug exhales deeply]
…to be a father.
[Doug crying]
How about those Mets?
Okay, now I'm better.
I truly believe that the fact that it was
a true story really helped him.
Would you mind holding her for a second
while I fix myself a plate?
Oh no, I don't think I should.
I'm not really qual… I can't.
-Okay.
-You can.
[Doug] What he brought to that scene,
you'll see if you watch the movie.
The baby's sleeping
and all of a sudden turns,
and Matthew looks at the baby,
and he actually added that, like, phew,
it was like the realization of,
"Holy mackerel,
this is about responsibility."
He stepped it up.
We got it. Yeah! Woo!
Eventually, I thought
Matthew had a lot of fun on the set…
[crew member] Take four.
…especially when it became
a family affair.
[crew member] Marker.
In the film, our dad played his dad.
Surprise!
Mom. Dad.
[both chuckling]
[Matthew] We rehearsed a scene
and then kind of caught each other's eyes
and just started, like, giggling
at how ridiculous it was
that he's playing my dad.
I wanted to call first. This was her idea.
[John Bennett Perry] I'm very proud
of how hard he works at it all.
It was great.
Until the day they shot at Lake Mead.
I wasn't there, and I wish to God I was
because during the lunch break,
Matthew got permission
to get on a jet ski,
and he flung himself in the air,
and he hurt himself.
[Matthew] I had no idea what was going on.
The doctor gave me a pill in a package
and said, "Take this
when you're done shooting."
I did, and then I felt
this incredible euphoria.
So why wouldn't I take more?
Then I started to kind of feel sick
when I wasn't taking them.
So… then you take three.
And then you take four.
Who knows what would have happened
if that accident didn't happen.
[music swells, fades]
The movie came out in '97,
and Matthew wanted it to be successful,
but he was scared.
He was nervous.
[reporter 1] Matthew Perry,
the shy Chandler from TV's Friends,
is breaking out of the confines
of the small screen and into movies.
[reporter 2] The film marks a chance
for Perry,
the latest star
of the hit television series Friends,
to make his big-screen debut,
temporarily leaving behind
the comfort of a sure thing.
[dramatic music playing]
[Doug] And then, you know,
the reviews came out.
I'm giving a thumbs up
because the two of them were charming
and also because I like the families.
[dings softly]
[Doug] So it was really exciting.
I was so proud. I couldn't believe it.
[bright music playing]
Days before the movie opened,
we got a call, like, last minute,
"Go to Chicago.
Oprah Winfrey's doing Matthew."
And we were like, "Wow, okay."
[audience cheering]
Welcome our friend Matthew Perry.
[audience cheering]
[Doug] He comes out
and big applause from everybody.
And Oprah greets him.
And she comments, she goes,
"Wow, you look… you… you look thin."
[Oprah] He's much thinner in person.
Well, TV…
For people at home,
you'll be normal size, but…
[Matthew] Yeah.
[Oprah and audience laugh]
Thanks.
Because TV makes you look bigger,
you know.
When I saw Matthew,
I was like, "This guy's very sick."
And I hadn't seen him in like four
or five months, when we did reshoots.
-[woman] Over here! Matthew!
-[fans clamoring]
[Doug] I thought
it could have been cancer.
It could have been,
you know, immune, something.
He's really sick, and it's really bad.
[photographers clamoring]
His excuse was, you know,
"I haven't gotten a lot of sleep,"
and whatever it was, it was passed over.
And, um, I never gave it another thought.
-[reporter] You've lost a little weight.
-I have a little.
-[reporter] How come? For a role?
-No real reason. Just have.
-Are they working you too hard?
-Yeah.
[foreboding music playing]
[Matthew] I made a prayer early on.
I said, "God, you can do
anything you want to me."
"Just please make me famous."
About three weeks later,
I got Friends.
But God did not forget the other part.
-[fan] Matt!
-[reporter] What are you up to right now?
Uh, doing, you know, the show,
and, uh, that's about it right now.
I really had to hide this problem.
[reporter 1] Matthew's mystery addiction.
-[reporter 2] Perry's being treated for…
-[reporter 3] …prescription painkillers.
I try to think that I'm funny.
I can't stop saying the word "funny."
This all went totally out of control.
[reporter 4] Perry is in the early stages
of chemical dependency.
Absolutely life-threatening.
[Matthew] But then it turns on you…
[paparazzo] Matthew!
[Matthew] …and says,
"Well, now I'm going to kill you."
[music swells, fades]
[mellow music playing]