After ruling our hearts as Chandler Bing for years, Matthew Perry passed away last year at his home in Los Angeles. The news was nothing less than a shock to people who grew up watching him in FRIENDS and related to his character throughout the ten seasons. While Chandler may have been “hopeless, awkward, and desperate for love,” we love him endlessly and we love the actor behind him even more.
In his life, Matthew Perry struggled a lot with addiction to drugs and alcohol which almost cost him his life when he was just forty-nine years old. This struggle occupied a huge chunk of his life, even when he was working on FRIENDS. However, Matthew Perry was able to keep the addiction in check thanks to his paycheck of a million dollars per episode.
Matthew Perry Got Candid about the Greatest Job in the World
Playing Chandler Bing was life-changing for Matthew Perry. As he said in his memoir, “And Chandler was born. This was my part now and there was no stopping it.”
Riding the waves of FRIENDS’ popularity, Perry and his co-stars were able to make a million dollars per episode for seasons 9 and 10 of the show. And while this was something to celebrate, the actor couldn’t help but have mixed feelings about it all.
In an exit interview with Entertainment Weekly (via PEOPLE), Perry stated,
The worst part of it was feeling a little guilty, like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m going here to do something I love.’
Perry might have played the fan-favorite Friend but he would give it all up in an instant if it meant that he didn’t have to battle addiction. Speaking to PEOPLE for a 2022 cover story, the actors stated,
The fact that I would trade it all to not have this disease is true. But I don’t belittle how fun the experience has been on Friends. And the money was amazing.
He then went on to admit that being on the show, creative experience, and hefty paychecks included, helped keep him sane and away from total destruction. According to Perry, when one is making a million bucks per episode, they wouldn’t want to risk it all to have just one more drink. It was the greatest job in the world for him.
Just the creative experience of being on the show probably saved my life. When you’re making a million dollars a week, you can’t drink the 37th drink. You have to go home and go to sleep.… That was the greatest job in the world.
Perry was always vocal about his battle with addiction and his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, is an unfiltered look into how he dealt with it all.
How It All Started and how the Friends Helped Him Through it All
Perry hadn’t had a pill before his jet ski accident while filming Fools Rush In (1997). He sustained a back injury for which he was prescribed Vicodin and he was hooked to it almost immediately. That’s where misfortune struck the actor.
Talking to the publication, he admitted that the “first high” felt like euphoria and made him realize that he didn’t have to drink anymore. Perry stopped drinking because of his newfound obsession and that’s how his friends realized that the actor was onto something else.
Yeah, I hadn’t had a pill before that. That first high from it was euphoria. And then I didn’t need to drink, which made you sweat and made you smell of alcohol. Ultimately that’s how my friends knew that I was doing something else, because I stopped drinking. And it rose really fast, so I got to the point of taking 55 [Vicodin] a day. I was down to 128 lbs.
Through it all, Perry’s FRIENDS co-stars were there for him. The six of them had bonded over the seasons and they were more than just co-actors, they were real friends. When asked if they supported him through his battle, Perry compared them to penguins, stating,
It’s like penguins. In nature, when one is sick or injured, the others surround it. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.
Alright, who is cutting onions here?
Perry’s death was a punch to the gut for everyone, but now, let’s make sure that the actor’s legacy lives on for centuries to come. After all, he knew just how to make us laugh, didn’t he?
Stream FRIENDS on Max.
