‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry dead at 54 after apparent drowning. Video / NZ Herald
OPINION
Could I be any more heartbroken? That oh-so-distinctive comic cadence has been playing in a loop in my head as I’ve tried to digest the news that actor Matthew Perry – beloved to millions for playing Chandler Bing on Friends – has died at the age of just 54.
I grew up watching Friends. They were a generation ahead of me, this smart, funny, affectionate, imperfect gang, and they made growing up look just that bit less scary. Yes, you have to fly the nest, but maybe you’ll find a new family who’ll help you muddle through your chaotic 20s.
Like a lot of people, I’m sure, Chandler was my favourite. He was the king of the sarcastic zinger, the one to cut through any schmaltz or pomposity – and my God, Perry’s delivery was phenomenal. His comic timing, his offbeat choices, left his co-stars in the dust. I adored his bromance with Matt LeBlanc’s Joey, the latter obligingly throwing pitch after pitch for Perry to knock out of the park.
But Perry wasn’t merely the funniest on the show. It was established early on that Chandler, scarred by his parents’ messy divorce as a kid, uses jokes as a defence mechanism. Remember the season one episode where Phoebe dates Roger the shrink? He had Chandler’s number instantly. “You’re so funny!” he exclaims, followed by the devastating line: “I wouldn’t want to be there when the laughter stops.”
That was Chandler – and Perry – in a nutshell. All the time that the actor was entertaining the world via the sitcom juggernaut, he was also locked in a lethal battle with substance abuse.
Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani and Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing. Photo / Getty Images
In 2001, at the height of his Friends fame, he entered rehab to treat his addiction to drugs and alcohol. It makes his consistently brilliant performance on the show all the more extraordinary, but perhaps also explains why insecure, scared, brittle Chandler felt so real in a way that, say, daffy Phoebe never quite did. Haven’t we all, at some point, used humour as a shield, or a cry for help? Perry was courageous enough to put that on screen.
He remained synonymous with Chandler, and never repeated the enormous success of Friends, but Perry impressed in other projects too. He and Bruce Willis formed a fascinatingly weird double act in the hitman movie The Whole Nine Yards, and, in his final film role, Perry brought real pathos to the middle-aged man pining for his golden youth in body-swap comedy 17 Again.
Back on the small screen, he was unfortunate enough to star in the one Aaron Sorkin TV series that flopped, hard: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the unfunny version of 30 Rock.
But he also made an excellent, Emmy-nominated guest appearance on The West Wing as the principled Republican lawyer Joe Quincy, one of several performances that prove he was an underrated dramatic actor.
In a riveting season five episode, the elderly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roy Ashland, collapses. Quincy, who used to clerk for Ashland, is dispatched by the White House to visit him in hospital – and maybe nudge him towards retirement. But instead, Quincy delivers a fiery rebuttal, stressing the vital importance of an independent court “above party or interest”. (Those were the days, eh?) There are none of Perry’s comic quirks or tricks here, yet, as an actor, he goes toe-to-toe with the great Richard Schiff as Toby Ziegler.
Matthew Perry with Amy Stewart and Richard Schiff in The West Wing.
Perry was even able to play a chilling villain in the legal drama The Good Wife. As the devious Mike Kresteva, he completely foxed Julianna Margulies’s attorney Alicia Florrick – and, in retrospect, predicted the new era of Republicanism – with his shameless ability to spin lies. What clever counterintuitive casting for an actor who always seemed almost too honest, a raw nerve exposed.
I once saw Perry in the flesh: starring in his own West End play The End of Longing, in 2016. It was essentially a sitcom on stage, so didn’t work at all as theatre, but that was almost beside the point. This was public therapy. Perry played… well, himself: a recovering alcoholic, skittish about intimacy, using jokes to cover the cracks. He told us his story and asked if we still accepted him. And we did.
I think that openness, years before we started to talk seriously about addiction, mental health, and the tears behind the clown’s smile, is why we fell in love with Perry, and with Chandler – and why both will live on.
