As the beloved underdog Chandler on Friends, Matthew Perry‘s worst vices were occasionally falling off the quit-smoking wagon; and overemphasising the word be.
The real-life Perry had much greater issues.
As the rest of his former Friends colleages reunited for an NBC special in Los Angeles, Perry was in London promoting the play he wrote and stars in called The End of Longing.
In a radio interview with BBC Radio 2, presenter Chris Evans asked Perry which episode of Friends was his least favourite.
“Oh my goodness. I think the answer is I don’t remember three years of it,” said Perry.
“So none of those… somewhere between season three and six… I was a little out of it, yeah.”
Seasons three to six of Friends were quite momentous for Chandler Bing. He reunited with Janice, the nasal-voiced crazy ex-girlfriend, he and Joey adopted a chick and a duck, and he and Monica slept together at Ross’s wedding.
Perry twice entered rehab during the show’s 10-year run for Vicodin, methamphetamine and alcohol addiction and has been treated for addiction since the show ended.
In 2013, he was given the Champion of Recovery award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for opening a sober living home for recovering addicts called Perry House, in his own former home in Malibu.
In 2013, Perry told People about his struggle with addiction on Friends.
“I was on Friends from age 24 to 34. I was in the white-hot flame of fame. The six of us were just everywhere all the time,” Perry said. “From an outsider’s perspective, it would seem like I had it all. It was actually a very lonely time for me because I was suffering from alcoholism.
“I couldn’t stop. Eventually things got so bad that I couldn’t hide it, and then everybody knew,” he said.
