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Chandler Bing and Richard Burke had a complicated relationship in Friends, but actors Matthew Perry and Tom Selleck had a great working relationship off-screen. The Blue Bloods actor, 79, paid tribute to the late actor and comedian in a new interview three months after Matthew was found dead in his home at the age of 54.
“He was raw talent. Matthew’s gone, so it’s easy to say this, but it’s true,” Tom told USA Today. “I think he was the most talented of a very talented group of people.”
While recalling what would happen when Matthew “walked onto set,” Tom pointed out that his arrival “brought the house down.”
“We had this role reversal thing going, where [my character, Richard] tried to be like them, and them like me,” Tom explained while admitting he couldn’t nail Matthew’s famous sarcastic line about Richard’s foosball technique.”Could that shot be any prettier? … Matthew had this speech pattern that I hadn’t been aware of,” Tom acknowledged.
While asking the late 17 Again actor how to sound more like Chandler, Matthew told Tom, “It’s a joke, Tom. It’s the way he says it.”
“But during that whole show, I kept going up to him asking, ‘Can you say it again?’ and he’d do the line,” Tom said, before adding, “That was his signature.”
Tom also described the nature of the Friends cast’s actual friendships with one another. He emphasized that there are “no bad stories” from his experience with Matthew and his co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matthew LeBlanc.
“No star stuff. Nothing like that there,” Tom said about the set life on Friends. “You’d sit down to get notes on rehearsal, and it was fascinating. Courteney would be sitting on somebody’s lap and then someone else’s the next time. They all just got along. I think it’s because all these actors had failures on other shows. And now, they’re in this hit. They all realized how lucky they were.”
While recollecting how they treated him, Tom said that the cast “couldn’t have been nicer.”
“But every day I’d see Matthew, and I’d ask him, ‘How’s your father?’ And he’d always smile and we’d catch up,” Tom pointed out, referring to Matthew’s dad, John Bennett Perry. “I got to know his father when I was a young struggling actor. Almost any commercial or pilot I went out on, there was John. We became real good friends.”
Matthew’s untimely death shocked the world in October 2023. After battling addiction for several years, the Emmy Award nominee — who was outspoken about his addiction struggles — had been in recovery before he died. Matthew’s cause of death was determined to have been from the “acute effects of ketamine.”
