Perry’s timing, coupled with the ability to infuse his character with a sweetness and vulnerability, helped make one of the most successful series in TV history work, even as his legacy included his longtime struggle with substance abuse.
Matthew Perry, the likable actor who became TV superstar as Chandler Bing on the beloved NBC sitcom Friends. had died. He was 54.
Perry died Saturday in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times. Authorities responded around 4 p.m. to his home, where he was discovered unresponsive.
Perry never married. His memoirs, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, was released in 2022.
While Perry had achieved massive success as part of Friends, one of the most successful shows of all time, he also battled alcohol and substance abuse for decades.
Debuting in 1994, Friends followed the lives and loves of six young New Yorkers trying to find themselves as they banded together for support. Through their ups and downs, trials and tribulations, one thing remained constant (as affirmed by the show’s theme song): These friends would always be there for each other.
Like his co-stars — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer — Perry was unknown when he landed the role. The show’s creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, knew that for Friends to work, there had to be chemistry.
“It was a long casting process,” Kauffman told the Today show during a 2019 interview with her, Crane and executive producer Kevin Bright. They said Chandler proved to be the most difficult character to cast. “Marta and I were thinking Chandler is just poorly written,” added Crane. “Then Matthew came in and you went, ‘Oh, well, there you go. Done. Done. That’s the guy.’”
Perry was under contract to star in another new series about a futuristic airport. As much as the Friends producers wanted him, they couldn’t have him. Jon Cryer, Jon Favreau and Craig Bierko were among thoe for the Chandler role as the search continued.
But Perry’s show wasn’t picked up, and he was free to sign on. At 24, he was the youngest member of the cast, and it was clear he was meant to play the character.
With knack for putting a sarcastic spin, Chandler was given the show’s best punchlines. But his snarky tone masked an insecurity that also made him one of the most awkward and insecure. Chandler’s uneasiness led to some of the show’s funniest situations.
In the first-season episode “The One With the Blackout,” Chandler fumbles a chance to connect with Victoria’s Secret model Jill Goodacre after the two are trapped in an ATM vestibule. Chandler finds himself stranded in the restroom of a crowded restaurant wearing just a pair of women’s panties when a former classmate (played by Julia Roberts) takes revenge for a childhood prank he played on her (later expanded upon in 1996’s “The One After the Superbowl”).
The 2001 installment “The One With Chandler’s Dad” discloses that Chandler’s parents divorced when he was young after his dad came out, and now Charles Bing (Kathleen Turner) is starring as a Las Vegas drag performer named Helena Handbasket. The father-son reconciliation was one of the series’ most poignant moments.
Perry’s cutting-edge timing, coupled with the ability to infuse the character with a sweetness and vulnerability, made it all work. In 2002, he and LeBlanc were nominated for an Emmy for lead actor in a comedy series, but they lost to Everybody Loves Raymond‘s Ray Romano.
As the popularity of Friends soared, Perry found himself on an emotional roller coaster ride.
“There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly,” Perry said in a 2002 interview with NY Times. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be. When [stardom] happens, it’s kind of like Disneyland for a while. For me, it lasted about eight months, this feeling of, ‘I’ve made it, I’m thrilled, there’s no problem in the world.’ And then you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything, it’s certainly not filling any holes in your life.”
As the pressures of celebrity mounted, Perry turned to alcohol. In 1997, he had a jet ski accident. This led to taking painkillers and years of abusing Vicodin, he said. He went into rehab in 2001.
He admitted he remembered little about the final three seasons of Friends because of his drinking.
In a 2013 People magazine story, he revealed that he didn’t become sober until he was 43. That year, he turned his former Malibu beach home into a men’s sober living facility, The Perry House. He began advocating for treatment over incarceration for drug offenders and devoted time and resources to helping other addicts.
“You can’t have a drug problem for 30 years and then expect to have it solved in 28 days,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life and a lot of wonderful accolades, but the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic comes up to me and says, ‘Will you help me stop drinking?’ I will say, ‘Yes. I know how to do that.’”
Matthew Langford Perry was born on Aug. 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His mother, Suzanne Marie, was a Canadian journalist who served as press secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. His father, John Bennett Perry, was an American actor and former model known for the 1971-81 ABC cop series 240-Robert. (Bennett played the father of Aniston’s boyfriend on a 1998 episode of Friends.)
Growing up in Canada, Perry attended West Carleton Secondary School and Ashbury College. As a teen, he showed a talent for tennis and, for a time, trained to go pro. This dream fell by the wayside when Perry was 15 and he moved to Los Angeles to live with his dad.
“Giving up tennis wasn’t really a decision I had to make,” the actor told Men’s Health magazine in a 2012 interview. “I was a very good tennis player in Ottawa, Canada — nationally ranked when I was, like, 13. Then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 15, and everyone in L.A. just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada. Not so much in Los Angeles. It was insane. I realized I wouldn’t be playing tennis for a living, so I went for acting.”
Perry’s TV debut came in 1979 when his father got him bit role on an episode of 240-Robert. When he was 15, Perry studied acting at The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, then honed his comic skills with improv classes at L.A. Connection during high school.
After landing guest spots on the sitcoms Charles in Charge in 1985 and Silver Spoons in 1986, Perry became a regular on the 1987-88 Fox comedy Second Chance, about a dead man (Kiel Martin) who returns to Earth to guide his younger teenage self (Perry). Shortly after its debut, the series was revamped and renamed Boys Will Be Boys to focus on the antics of Perry’s character and his teenage buddies
Perry did an impressive 3 espisodes arc on Growing Pains (1989) as the boyfriend of Carol Seaver (Tracey Gold) who gets killed in a drunk driving accident. He played Valerie Bertinelli’s kid brother in 1990 on the sitcom Sydney and could be seen on episodes of Highway to Heaven, Empty Nest, Who’s the Boss? and Beverly Hills, 90210.
A 1992 guest appearance on the HBO comedy Dream On brought him to the attention of its creators, Kauffman and Crane. They remembered the young actor when they were putting together their next series — Six of One, which eventually became Friends.
At his height, Perry attempted to parlayed his fame into a feature film career (he had made his feature debut in 1988’s A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon).
His most successful effort was The Whole Nine Yards (2000), in which he starred as meek dentist who gets mixed up with a notorious killer for hire (Bruce Willis). It grossed more than $100 million worldwide and spawned a 2004 sequel.
His other big screen efforts included Fools Rush In (1997), Almost Heroes (1998), Three to Tango (1999) and Serving Sara (2002).
When those failed, Perry returned to TV and starred in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), Mr. Sunshine (2011) and Go On (2012) — but none went beyond one season.
A 2015 reboot of The Odd Couple, in which he played Oscar Madison to Thomas Lennon’s Felix Unger, made it halfway through season 3 before getting the ax.
Perry had better success lending his talents in supporting roles. He earned Emmy nominations in 2003 and 2004 for his work in West Wing as Joe Quincy, a Republican lawyer brought in as an associate White House counsel by President Bartlet’s Democratic administration. As smarmy politician Mike Kresteva, Perry ran against Alicia Florrick’s husband Peter for Illinois governor in The Good Wife (2012). Kresteva was brought back for several episodes in the series’ 2017 spinoff, The Good Fight.
In 2006, he received his fourth Emmy nomination for his performance in The Ron Clark Story, portraying real-life teacher who forgoes comfort of small town to make a difference in the New York City public school system.
The End of Longing, a stage play Perry wrote and starred in, made its debut in 2016 at the Playhouse Theatre in London. A dark, comic tale about a quartet of lost souls musing over the mysteries of life as they drink the night away in a Los Angeles bar, it featured Perry as Jack, a drunk who the actor described as an exaggerated version of himself. The following year, he brought The End of Longing to off-Broadway and the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Perry never married. His memoirs, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, was released in 2022.
