Matthew Perry Said 12 Percent of Fame Was a ‘Little Scary’ 1 Year into Filming Friends

Matthew Perry found fame fast when he was cast in Friends, which premiered 31 years ago this September.

Perry, who died in October 2023 from an accidental ketamine overdose, appeared on the cover of PEOPLE on Sept. 25, 1995, just as Friends hit the airwaves for its second season. The actor, then 26 years old, explained in a lengthy interview that he and his friend Andrew Hill Newman had actually written a pilot, called Maxwell’s House, about a group of twenty-something friends that NBC was interested. After meetings, the network decided they wanted another show with a similar premise, Friends. 

He auditioned for the show. When he read the script for the first time, he thought, “My God! Their writers did a better job than I did.”  He had his first audition for producers on a Wednesday, and by the following Monday, he was on set working on the new show.

When the show premiered on Sept. 22, 1994, Perry’s Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Green, Courteney Cox’s Monica Geller, Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay, Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani and David Schwimmer’s Ross Geller quickly became some of America’s favorite characters. The show became a top 10 hit — and continued to have good ratings in the summer reruns — and was only poised to be bigger and better in season two. 

But Perry, still at the start of his success, candidly admitted to PEOPLE that fame was already a mixed bag. “I’d say 88 percent of it is great,” he said, “and 12 percent is a little scary.” 

He added of the interest in his personal life, “The attention is gratifying, and part of what we’re in this business for.” He shared that “the good thing” was that every day, he went to an “unbelievably wonderful place to work.”

Aniston said of her costar, “People assume he’s just a funny guy, but he’s also very sensitive.” She called him “a good guy.” LeBlanc called him “a sweetheart,” and Kudrow added, “He’s just somebody you want to be around.”

In 2022, Perry spoke to PEOPLE for another cover story about his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, where he wrote candidly about his struggle with addiction. “I could handle it, kind of,” he said of balancing the show and his drug usage. “But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble.”

He credited his castmates’ support with getting him through tough moments. “They were understanding, and they were patient,” he said. “It could be said that [doing the show] saved me.”

Perry also reflected on the person he was back in 1994 when he was cast on the show. “He was just a guy desperate for fame, thinking that it would fix everything. Just ‘on’ all the time,” he said. “It wasn’t until my mid-30s that I realized I don’t have to do that because it’s probably annoying to people. I was 24 when I got [the role], and the disease was just getting started right around then.”