Matthew Perry has opened up about his final moments on Friends, revealing it was not the same bittersweet moment that everyone else on the show experienced.
In an excerpt from his new memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry revealed that he felt nothing as his cast mates and the crew cried and gushed around him.
Perry recalled: "It was January 23, 2004. The keys on the counter, a guy who looked a lot like Chandler Bing said, ‘Where?'
"'Embryonic Journey' by Jefferson Airplane played, the camera panned to the back of the apartment door, then Ben, our first [assistant director], and very close friend, shouted for the last time, 'That’s a wrap' and tears sprang from almost everyone’s eyes like so many geysers."
But the man who brought the character of Chandler Bing to life just wasn't feeling it.
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"We had made 237 episodes, including this last one, called, appropriately enough, 'The Last One'. Jennifer Aniston was sobbing," Perry wrote.
"After a while, I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body. Even Matt LeBlanc was crying."
He added: "But I felt nothing."
Perry went on to question why he wasn't evoking the same kind of emotions as his colleagues.
"I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside," Perry reflected.
Instead of blubbering like his world-famous colleagues, Perry revealed he decided to take a 'a slow walk around the stage' with his then-girlfriend, who was coincidentally also named Rachel.
The stage - which is found at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, Hollywood - was renamed from Stage 24 to 'The Friends Stage' after the show ended.
"We said our various goodbyes, agreeing to see each other soon in the way that people do when they know it’s not true, and then we headed out to my car," Perry wrote.
Perry also wrote about how the high points of his career were marred by low points in his life.
For example, fans around the world were overjoyed when Monica finally walked down the aisle to Chandler in the season seven finale.
Perry, however, was bundled into a car as soon as filming wrapped and whisked away to a drug and alcohol treatment centre as soon as filming wrapped.
"I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment centre — at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician," Perry wrote.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry is out now.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Friends, Drugs, News
Rachel Lang