Matthew Perry Almost Turned Down the Audition to Play Chandler Bing on ‘Friends’

Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing on "Friends"

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 29 October 2023

Imagine this—Matthew Perry almost passed up the audition that led to his star-making turn on Friends, where he played the iconic character Chandler Bing for a decade. During a 2015 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers (and per People), Perry recalled becoming desperate for work in 1994 after his “terrible” manager informed him that he had “no money.”

“This happened to be the first year that Friends was shot, but I was off the market because I had taken a job on a pilot called LAX 2194 that was about baggage handlers at L.A. Airport in the year 2194,” he said. “So, I was wearing a futuristic shirt. And little people played the aliens in which I had to sort out the aliens’ luggage, and that was basically the show.”

Though he was committed to the role on LAX 2194, he received a script for Friends, and found it “hilarious and great”: “There was this part that was perfect for me, and it was making me crazy that I couldn’t go up for it because [of] the baggage handlers show,” he said. “I was losing my mind.”

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Everything changed when an executive at Fox declared LAX 2194 “the worst thing we’ve ever seen in our lives.” The executive then said of Perry “He is available. You can hire him for your little show called Friends Like Us, that then became Friends.”

Perry then joined the cast alongside Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Green, Courteney Cox’s Monica Geller, Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay, David Schwimmer’s Ross Gellar, and Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani. The show ran for 10 seasons, from 1994 to 2004.

In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry remembers praying for his life to change weeks before his Friends audition. “About three weeks before my audition for Friends, I was alone in my apartment on Sunset and Doheny, tenth floor—it was very small, but it had a great view, of course—and I was reading in the newspaper about Charlie Sheen. It said that Sheen was yet again in trouble for something, but I remember thinking, ‘Why does he care—he’s famous.’ Out of nowhere, I found myself getting to my knees, closing my eyes tightly, and praying. I had never done this before.”

His prayer included: “God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.” Perry wrote, “Three weeks later, I got cast in Friends. And God has certainly kept His side of the bargain—but the Almighty, being the Almighty, had not forgotten the first part of that prayer as well,” he said, seemingly referring to his addiction struggles, which plagued him for nearly a quarter-century before becoming sober in May 2021.

Perry died yesterday at age 54, the result of an apparent drowning at his L.A. home.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.