‘Friends’ role didn’t bring Matthew Perry happiness, says George Clooney

Hollywood star George Clooney says Matthew Perry had a hard time staying happy even after bagging one of the central characters on the long-running sitcom Friends.

Advertisement

Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the comedy series, died at the age of 54 on October 30 after being found unresponsive at his Pacific Palisades home in Los Angeles. An autopsy report released last week said Perry died from the ‘acute effects of ketamine’. The actor struggled with addiction for many years and had detailed it all in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

Clooney, 62, said he knew Perry since he was a teenager. “I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid,” the actor said.

Perry always wished to be on a sitcom, added Clooney, who had appeared as a guest star with his ER colleague Noah Wyle in the 17th episode of Friends, season one.

“He would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and would be the happiest man on earth’. And he got probably one of the best ever. But he wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace,” the actor said.

Perry and Clooney tasted stardom around the same time in the early 1990s. At the time, Clooney was filming ER, while Perry was shooting for Friends at the same set of Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. The two shows went on to become the most popular ones in American television history.

Due to his struggle with addiction, Perry found it hard to go on, Clooney said. “We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heart-breaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, don’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life,” he added.