Matthew Perry, who died yesterday, was the funniest of the Friends – and the saddest. ‘What must it be like to not be crippled by fear and self-loathing?’ his character, Chandler Bing, asked. It seems Perry never quite figured out the answer.
Chandler was a brilliant comic creation – and Perry, a melancholic clown, perfectly suited to the part. Perry stood out among his Friends castmates with his impeccable comic timing and the unique cadence with which he delivered his lines.
To most of the world, he will always be Chandler – the brilliant, charming, sad-funny clown
But he was insecure and addictive. Perry once said that, when the live studio audience of Friends didn’t laugh at one of his jokes ‘I felt like I was gonna die’. The pressure of performing, or the success of his performances, or some combination of both, fed into his relentless struggle with substances.
Perry made it to the age of 54 without marrying. Last year he discussed his hopes of settling down and having children in the future: ‘I think I’d be a great father,’ he said. In his memoir, he confessed to his sense of isolation: ‘I’m lonely, but there’s a couple of people on the payroll to keep me safe.’
Perry was born in Massachusetts in 1969. His family moved to Canada where his mother, a journalist, worked in the press office for the first Prime Minister Trudeau. As a teenager he moved to Los Angeles where he got a string of minor acting gigs before striking gold age 26 when he was cast in Friends.
There has never been a show as big as Friends and, now in the age of streaming, it is almost certain there never will be. Between 1994 and 2004 the show was watched by 25 million people a week, 17 years after the final episode aired it was the fourth most watched show in the world. Warner Brothers reportedly makes close to $1 billion (£826 million) a year in syndication fees for the series.
Friends continues to resonate with millennials because it encapsulates a pivotal time that almost all young people experience in their 20s, when their friends are their family. The characters have no spouses or children and are too young to have successful careers, so their lives revolve around hanging out.
While Gen Z critics have lambasted the show for being too white, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, the generation that came before them worshipped Friends. It depicted an existence that felt somehow real and fantastical: life in a loft apartment in Manhattan where you can bump into handsome doctors (George Clooney) who want to date you and land high-flying careers while still spending 90 per cent of your waking hours sitting on a sofa with pals.
But the show that made the cast very successful and very, very rich failed to make Perry very happy. The opening of his 2022 memoir begins ‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead’.
In 2018, his drug addiction nearly killed him: a stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, more than a dozen stomach surgeries and nine months with a colostomy bag.
Aged 49, he realised he had spent half of his life in treatment centres or sober living facilities. He told the New York Times he spent ‘probably spent $9 million trying to get sober’.
Last year, he revealed he’d been sober 18 months; a friend of his from Alcoholics Anonymous said he’d spoken to him recently and he’d been ‘positive’. He reportedly played pickleball for two hours earlier yesterday before he was found by his assistant unresponsive in his hot tub where he is suspected to have drowned. The Los Angeles Police Department has said no foul play is suspected.
Perry did have some success beyond Friends. He starred in Numb (2007) as a screenwriter going through a psychological crisis, the teen comedy 17 Again (2009) and has written for television The Odd Couple (2015) and Mr Sunshine (2012). But to most of the world, he will always be Chandler – the brilliant, charming, sad-funny clown. RIP
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