With the exception of James Michael Tyler (Gunther, the Central Perk barista), who died prematurely of cancer in 2021, Matthew Perry is the first "friend" to go, also ahead of his time. Above all, he is the first of the core gang of six, and the emotion that tinges the tributes paid in the media and on the networks speaks volumes about the sympathy that the character Chandler Bing and the actor who personified him continued to elicit. Perry's death on Saturday, October 28, in a way brings the series to a close, almost 20 years after its last episode. Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Joey and Chandler will never be seen together again.
The circumstances of his death, while still obscure, hint at a body giving out after much struggle. Audiences realised the extent of the actor's physical deterioration during his participation in the Friends: The Reunion program organized in 2021, although, at the time of recording, Perry had been sober for 18 months. Everyone knew he wasn't well, his state of health filled the pages of celebrity magazines, but to this extent? Opiates, heroin, alcohol. Leafing through the memoirs he wrote – alone, which is rare in the entertainment business – and published in 2022, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, you could be forgiven for wondering above all how he managed to live to 54 on such a regime.
Of the six Friends, Perry's performance was undoubtedly the most immersive. And to say that he never inhabited a role as fully as Chandler Bing's is no slight to him. Especially since this character of a sarcastic financier, clumsy in love, precursor of the cringe and full of strange behaviors (who could possibly forget his habit of dancing every time something important happens to him?), had everything to be less lovable than Joey (Matt LeBlanc), the idiot heartthrob, or Ross (David Schwimmer), the uptight paleontologist. On the contrary, along with Monica (Courteney Cox), he was perhaps the most constructed and endearing character in the sitcom created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane. These two oddballs didn't end up together for nothing.
For those who may have forgotten the actor's burlesque talent and the precision of his acting, just go and search YouTube for the countless best of Chandler scenes. Between the "shut up!!!" from the couch scene (season 5, episode 16, the best of the entire series), the mustache attempt during season 2 and the desk drawer he voluntarily gets handcuffed to by Rachel's boss (season 4), there are plenty of good examples to choose from.
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