Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

What was happening to me? What was wrong with me? Why was I the only person there who had been dying for another drink? I couldn’t tell anyone this was happening, because even I didn’t understand it. I think for many years my drinking was a secret to people—well, at least the extent of it. Certainly back then. I was just a college-age kid wasting the equivalent of his college years on booze and women and making my guy friends, and women, laugh. What was there to admit?

But what no one knew was I was drinking alone—that remained a secret. How much I drank when I was drinking alone depended entirely on the year. Eventually I’d work my way up to that party bottle with the handle—killed that in two days, by myself. But that night of the magic show, even then I was freaking out. What’s going on? I’ve never experienced this feeling before in my life. Why can’t I think of a single fucking solitary thing except a drink? If you’re at a bar, you just order another drink … but when it’s the middle of the night, you don’t tend to lie wide awake wishing you had one in your hand. That was new. That was different. That was terrifying. And that was a secret.

Ten years later, I read the following words in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: “Drinkers think they are trying to escape, but really they are trying to overcome a mental disorder they didn’t know they had.”

Eureka!—someone understands me. But reading that was both wonderful and horrible. It meant I wasn’t alone—there were others who thought like me—but it also meant I was an alcoholic and would have to quit drinking one day at a time, for the rest of my life.

How was I ever going to have fun again?

I can’t decide if I actually like people or not.

People have needs, they lie, cheat, steal, or worse: they want to talk about themselves. Alcohol was my best friend because it never wanted to talk about itself. It was just always there, the mute dog at my heel, gazing up at me, always ready to go on a walk. It took away so much of the pain, including the fact that when I was alone, I was lonely, and that when I was with people, I was lonely, too. It made movies better, songs better, it made me better. It made me comfortable with where I was instead of wishing I was somewhere—anywhere—else. It made me content to hang out with the woman in front of me rather than continually wondering if life would be better if I were dating someone else. It took away being an outsider in my own family. It removed the walls all around me, except one, even if for a while. It allowed me to control my feelings and, in doing so, control my world. Like a friend, it was there for me. And I was fairly certain I would go crazy without it.

And I’m right about that, by the way—I would have gone crazy without it.

It made me want to be a completely different person. To give it up seemed impossible. Learning to move forward in life without it was tantamount to asking someone to go about his or her day without breathing. For that, I will always be grateful to alcohol. It finally beat me into a state of reasonableness.

According to Malcom Gladwell, if you did anything for ten thousand hours, you could be an expert. This made me an expert in two areas: 1980s tennis and drinking. Only one of those subjects is important enough to save a life.

I’ll let you guess which one.

But when I wanted to feel less alone among people, it was Hank Azaria, David Pressman, and eventually Craig Bierko I chose.

Weirdly, I’d played a character with the surname Azarian on Beverly Hills, 90210. Getting a guest spot on episode nineteen of the twenty-two-episode first season was a big deal. Beverly Hills, 90210 hadn’t yet reached cultural phenomenon status by the time I played Roger Azarian, Beverly Hills High tennis star and the son of a hard-charging, distant, businessman father—but the themes in that episode (teen depression, suicide, and learning disabilities) marked it out as a show that wouldn’t shy away from real shit, however privileged its milieu.

The episode, which borrowed its title from T. S. Eliot of all people (“April Is the Cruelest Month”), opens with me hitting the crap out of some tennis balls, showing off my Canadian-ranked form, my big, whipped forehands and aggressive backhand winners, showcasing the fact that I could really play. I was even using a throwback, Björn Borg–style wooden Donnay racket with the tiny head, which I manage to break in the scene by hitting too hard. Jason Priestley, in the role of Brandon Walsh, noting my thinly veiled rage, proceeds to ask me how many rackets I go through in a week, and in an art-imitating-life moment, I say, “Depends on whose face I see on the ball.”

I couldn’t escape stairwells, even when I was playing a fictional character on a TV show. By the end of the episode, I’ve shared a screenplay with Brandon, gotten drunk, held a gun to my own face, and ended up in a locked psychiatric ward—only the gun bit was play-acting, the rest was Method.

I wasn’t yet twenty-two. For a few years I’d been a guest actor, doing a series here, a series there, guest starring roles.

The point was, I was working. My first biggish break had come when I was cast in Second Chance, though my casting was overshadowed by who wasn’t cast.

I still think Second Chance had a great premise: a forty-year-old guy called Charles Russell dies in a hovercraft accident (because that happens all the time) and goes to see Saint Peter in his office. If the light shines gold on Charles as he stands in judgment, he goes to heaven; if it shines red, he goes to hell—but if it shines blue, as it does in Mr. Russell’s case, he was called a Blue Lighter, meaning, they didn’t know what to do with him. So, Saint Peter decides to send him back to Earth to meet his fifteen-year-old self and guide him through a life of better decision-making. That way, by the time he once again boards a hovercraft at forty, when he dies the second time, because he’s been a better person, the light will change from a we-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-you blue to a we’re-sold, welcome-to-eternity gold. Can you think of a more perfect premise for a father-son acting team? And my father and I duly auditioned. Then, disaster—I got a green light to be the son of a Blue Lighter, and Dad got no light at all.

“They want you. They don’t want me,” Dad said when he heard the news. I guess I threw him a hard-to-read look—after all, I’d gotten a huge part, even if he hadn’t, so I imagine my face combined sorrow for him and glee for me—so much so that he said, “Do I have to repeat it? They want you. They don’t want me.”

My father’s hurt feelings aside, I had just booked my first TV show. I was making five grand a week; I was seventeen years old. My ego was off the charts; I thought I was the shit, just like everyone thought Second Chance was. It came in as number 93 of the ninety-three ranked shows that season. For the final nine episodes after the initial thirteen, the whole Saint Peter / Blue Lighter stuff had been forgotten and the show just followed me and my pals in our various adventures. So, it didn’t matter that the show remained ninety-third in a list of ninety-three—someone important had liked me enough to build a show around me, which only increased my ego to epic proportions. And might well have set me up for success later.

My father dealt with this news by not attending a single taping except the very last one. He had his reasons, I suppose.

Accordingly, I was able to score various guest roles after that, and two years later I got another series, this time in a show starring Valerie Bertinelli. The show, called Sydney, followed the exploits of Valerie as a private eye (!), and I played her fast-talking brother—that’s all you’ll ever need to know about those thirteen episodes (Sydney was canceled after one half season). But despite its failure to ignite audiences, I’ll never forget two things about Sydney.

First, Valerie’s lawyer/love interest in the show was played by an actor named Craig Bierko—almost immediately after meeting Craig on set, I called Hank Azaria and said, “He sounds the way we do!” which was the highest praise I could give someone. But before I could truly get to see how funny Craig was, there was the second thing I should tell you about Sydney—during filming, I fell madly in love with Valerie Bertinelli, who was clearly in a troubled marriage and truly getting off on two of the funniest guys on the planet adoring her and heaping their attention on her.

Valerie Bertinelli—those seven syllables once stirred every part of my soul and other parts.

In the early 1990s, there was no one more attractive than Valerie. Not only was she stunning and vivacious, but she also had this great, booming, adorable laugh, which Craig and I longed to hear all day long. Now that Craig and I were cast, it was as if Valerie had two new clowns to play with, and we threw ourselves into those roles with abandon. The three of us had a lot of fun.

But for me, being on Sydney and playing the fool with Valerie was more than just fun—it was serious shit. I was having to hide my love for her as we worked (this wouldn’t be the last time this happened), which was desperately difficult. My crush was crushing; not only was she way out of my league, but she was also married to one of the most famous rock stars on the planet, Eddie Van Halen. Back when we were making Sydney, Eddie’s band, Van Halen, were in the middle of a string of four, back-to-back, number one albums—they were arguably the biggest band on the planet in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and Eddie was arguably the greatest rock guitarist on the planet at the time, too.

As for me, well, I was always able to get laid because I made women laugh, but I knew that being funny always came in second to musicians. (In the world of music, there’s a hierarchy, too—it’s my contention that bass players tend to get laid first, because they’re stolid and cool and their fingers move in gentle yet powerful ways [except for Paul Mc- Cartney; he never got laid first]; drummers come next because they’re all power and grit; then guitarists because they get those fancy solos; then, weirdly, the lead singer, because even though he’s out there up front, he never quite looks fully sexy when he has to throw his head back and reveal his molars to hit a high note.) Whatever the correct order, I knew I was way behind Eddie Van Halen—not only was he a musician, which means he was able to get laid more easily than someone who is funny, but he was also already married to the object of my desire.

It is important to point out here that my feelings for Valerie were real. I was completely captivated—I mean, I was obsessed with her and harbored elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me. I was nineteen and lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Laurel Canyon and Burbank (called Club California, mind you). But fantasies and first loves don’t know about real estate, they don’t know about real anything.

I didn’t stand a fucking chance. Of course.

That said, there was one night … I was over at Valerie and Eddie’s house, just hanging out and gazing at Valerie, trying to make her laugh. When you made her laugh, you felt ten feet tall. As the night progressed, it was clear that Eddie had enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard, one more time, and eventually he just passed out, not ten feet away from us, but still. This was my chance! If you think I didn’t actually have a chance in hell you’d be wrong, dear reader—Valerie and I had a long, elaborate make-out session. It was happening—maybe she felt the same way I did. I told her I had thought about doing that for a long time, and she had said it right back to me. “Heaven” eventually wrapped up, and I hopped in my black Honda CRX and headed back to Club California with a hard-on that could have propped up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and a nineteen-year-old head flooded with dreams of a life spent with the object of my affection/obsession.

I told Craig Bierko about this the following day, and he passed on some desperately needed advice and reality, though it was advice I wasn’t ready to take.

“Be careful,” he said. He’s just jealous, I thought as I prepared for the following day of work, but this time with Valerie as my new girlfriend.

The following day at work did not go as I expected it would. Valerie made no mention of what had happened and was behaving—as she should have been—like this was just a normal day. I quickly got the hint and also played the role I was supposed to, but inside I was devastated. Many a tearful night and spending the bulk of my daytimes sleeping off hangovers in my tiny trailer—not to mention hours and hours of watching Craig’s part get bigger as Valerie’s love interest on the show—all made for a very sad disillusioned teenager. The show did very badly, and I was so grateful that four weeks after that fateful night, Sydney got canceled, and I didn’t have to see Valerie anymore.

She, of course, had done nothing wrong, but having to see her every day and pretend I was fine about everything reminded me too much of what I had to do every day with my mother back in Ottawa, Canada.

I have spent my life being attracted to unavailable women. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out that this had something to do with my relationship with my mother. My mother captivated every room she entered. I vividly remember being at some fancy ballroom when I was about six years old, and when my mom came in, every head in the room turned. I wanted her to turn and look at me in these moments, but she was working and could not—it took me only thirty-seven years to work that out.

Ever since then I have been addicted to “the turn.” Once the turn happened, I could start making a woman laugh and making her want me sexually. Once the sex was done, reality set in, and I realized I didn’t know these women at all. They were available, so I had no need for them. I had to get back out there and try to make them make the turn. That’s why I slept with so many women. I was trying to re-create my childhood and win.

I knew none of this at the time, of course, and just thought something had gone wrong with them. Surprise surprise, everyone—Canadian actor-boy had some major mommy issues.

But I was nineteen, and life quickly moved on for everyone. A year later, Van Halen released the aptly titled For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and I went back to trying to pick up women at the Formosa. And trying to re-create “the turn” as often as humanly possible.

Sometimes it worked; but every time, I left at 1:40 A.M. to rush to the nearest liquor store so that I could score more vodka and keep drinking deep into the night. I’d sit there, emptying the bottle (eventually the one with the handle), watching The Goodbye Girl or even the Michael Keaton movie Clean and Sober (figure that one out), until just like Eddie Van Halen, I passed out. A needling thought had begun to enter my brain, too—not a huge one, but one nonetheless: You are drinking every night, though this thought was quickly washed away by the next drink.

And every next day, I’d manage to drag myself to lunch, where I would meet Craig Bierko, to this day, by far the fastest comic mind I have ever seen. I thought my mind was fast, but no, it was Craig Bierko. Hank Azaria became the richest one of the group, because he had been doing a voice on The Simpsons since 1955. I was to be the most famous, and David Pressman was to be a journeyman actor just like his dad, Laurence Pressman, and the craziest. David loved to do things like run naked into a supermarket shouting, “I have horrible problems, someone please shave me!” and then run out. (He did this well into his forties; I sometimes joined him in disrobing in public, though I quit in my mid-thirties because I’m the mature one.)

To this day no one has made me laugh as hard as Craig Bierko. Being funnier than Hank, David, and me as a threesome was pretty much impossible, but Craig managed it. Being funnier than Hank and me without David was also unheard of, but Craig managed that, too. We would go out to lunch, and Craig would say something that was so funny that fifteen minutes after lunch had finished and I was driving home, I would have to pull over to the side of the road because I would still be laughing, and Craig would drive by, see me laughing, and know why. There was no one funnier than Craig. No one.

The other thing that drove our friendships, besides trying to be the quickest, the funniest, was fame—we were all absolutely desperate to be famous. Hank, being the voice of The Simpsons, had the most lucrative gig, but it was not the Al Pacino career he longed for. As for me, well, I had done plenty of TV, but nothing that had even remotely brought me fame … and fame, fame, fame, that’s all that any of us cared about. In between the laughter—and after we’d shared the latest stories of auditions gone awry or scripts we’d read and hated—the quieter moments were filled with a profound worry, a quiet yearning and fear that we would never make it, that fame would just somehow pass us by. We were four strong egos, four funny men, the bon mots flying about like shrapnel, but the battle raged on: the battle for fame.

I held firm in my belief that fame would fill that unaccompanied hole in me, the one that Valerie refused to fill. But now it was just me and vodka attempting and failing this seemingly impossible task. When fame finally happened, well … we’re coming to that.

I once made out with David Pressman, or tried to, though I didn’t mean to, either way.

When we were in our early twenties, he and I and a couple of other guys headed east to Vegas to do the Vegas thing. We basically had no money, but that had never before stopped four idiots heading to Sin City. I think I had about two hundred bucks in my pocket; the four of us rented one motel room off the Strip, with two beds. I shared a bed with David; in the middle of the night, I guess I was dreaming about Gaby, my ex, and was inching closer and closer to David, saying things like “Aw, baby,” and “You smell so good,” and “I promise I’ll be quick.” He, too, was mercifully asleep, but his subconscious had the wherewithal to keep saying, “NO!” and “back up!” and “leave me the fuck alone!” Eventually I started kissing the back of his neck, which caused us both to startle awake—seeing the horrified look on his face I said, “Aw, just forget it,” and scuttled back to my side of the bed.

Clearly, we all needed some release.

The first night we hit the tables, and somehow, I lucked into something, winning $2,600 at blackjack, which was the most cash any of us had ever had.

It was time to spend it unwisely.

I lifted up my arms and, like a king, exclaimed, “I’m getting everyone laid!”

A cabdriver took us way out of town to a place called Dominions, a place he promised us would satiate our needs (he received, presumably, a cut for every set of foolish young men he deposited at Dominions in the desert). To even gain ingress to this fine establishment, we were informed by a man with no neck that somebody had to drop at least a grand, and as I’d done well on the tables, that privilege fell to me. In fact, I ended up plopping down $1,600 on a single bottle of champagne, at which point we were each escorted to a separate, boxy room, where a young lady awaited each of us.

I figured the $1,600 I’d already spent would be good for what I hoped would come next, but I was sadly mistaken. In fact, I wasn’t going to be taken at all unless I proffered another $300, which I duly did, but before I could graduate to the business end of the evening, David Pressman and the other two guys appeared at my door, needing their own $300 stipend. Their financial needs met, I returned to the matter at hand. (It didn’t occur to me to do the math, but here it is in case you need it: I started with $200, won $2,600, dropped $1,600 on the champagne, and ponied up an additional $300 each, for a total of $2,800—everything I had.)

With the financial commitments in place, the young lady proceeded to start dancing at me, a ways off at the other side of the room, and though she gyrated in a perfectly acceptable, if slightly “Roxbury Girls” manner, I was ready to take our relationship to the next level.

“What the hell is going on?” I said, obliquely.

“What?” she said.

“What? We’re supposed to be having sex!” I said. “I’ve spent a small fortune in here!”

Then she explained to me for some reason that I could arrange the pillows wherever I wanted to.

“That’s wonderful, and I’m excited about the pillow thing—I really am—but aren’t we supposed to be doing something else right about now?” I asked/begged.

“Are you the police?” she asked.

“No!” I said, though I was beginning to wonder if I should call them to report a fraud. “I paid you all that money. We had a deal—”

“Oh!” she said, interrupting me. “That was just for the dance.…”

At that point, a rapping on the door alerted me to the fact that each of my cronies had faced the same, disappointing fate. But as we were thoroughly out of money by this point, with tears in our eyes, four taken (though not taken) losers stepped out into the inky black of the Mojave and began the long walk back to the motel.

One of my friends, Nick, did get to take his girl to Young Guns II the following day, so that’s something. And there were a lot of unanswered questions in the original Young Guns.

In 1994, Craig Bierko was the hot item in that particular pilot season. All of us were running around auditioning for the latest slate of sitcoms and dramas, but Craig was the one everyone wanted. This, and he was quicker with a line than me. He was also much better-looking than me, but let’s not go into any more of that—we don’t want a crying author on our hands. I should have hated him, but funny always wins, so I decided to keep loving him.

I was twenty-four, and already I was missing 50 percent of my auditions. I was tailing out as an actor. Drinking was slowly but surely winning the war against auditions, and no one was really interested in me anyway. I wasn’t getting any movies, and the roles I got on TV were hardly setting the world alight. I was hungover half the time, the rest of the time I was on my way to lunch or the Formosa. My manager sat me down one day and told me that the people I aspired to be—Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks—all possessed the attitude I was shooting for. But they both also looked great, and he was getting daily feedback from casting directors and producers that I looked like a mess.

Hank, too, was starting to get worried that he was wasting his life away and stopped coming to the Formosa and the funny lunches—he was always very serious about his body and his career.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but around that time, I got a phone call from my then–business manager.

“Matthew, you are out of money.”

“How about a little warning?” I said, scared to death. “Did it occur to you that a few months ago you could have given me a heads-up? You know, via a call in which you said, ‘Hey, Matthew, your funds are looking a bit anemic,’ instead of waiting till I was now broke?”

There was silence on the other end of the line, as though keeping tabs on someone’s income before they were broke was an entirely new concept for a business manager.

Fortunately, I had just enough juice in me to book a part in a terrible pilot. Hanging up with my now former business manager, I called my agents and told them I was out of money, I needed a job, something, anything, and it had to be right then.

If, gentle reader, you’re imagining that’s how I got Friends, you might want to cool your jets. That call led to the show that almost stopped me from getting Friends.

L.A.X. 2194 was a “sci-fi comedy” about baggage handlers at Los Angeles International Airport. You could really stop there, but there’s more: those numbers in the title give away the twist—it was set two hundred years in the future, and the air travelers would be aliens. The show would star Ryan Stiles as an automaton office manager with a weird accent (seriously, Ryan is a hilarious actor, but what was that accent?), and me as the poor guy who had to be the lead in this mess and sort out the baggage issues for the arriving aliens, who happen to have been played by Little People in ridiculous wigs.

If all this sounds underwhelming, please know that it was way worse than that. I had to wear a futuristic shirt for a start. Despite my misgivings (to repeat, it was a “comedy” about baggage handlers set two hundred years in the future where the aliens are played by Little People), the pilot paid me $22,500, so I was set for drinks and food at the Formosa for a while … but it did something else, too: because I was attached to L.A.X. 2194, I was thereby off the market for all other shows.

Then, disaster struck, and I don’t mean L.A.X. 2194 got picked up for a season—that never happened, thank God. What did happen was a script for a new show called Friends Like Us became the hot read of the season. Everyone who read it knew it was going to be great; I read it and immediately called those same agents who’d gotten me L.A.X. 2194.

“You have to get me on Friends Like Us,” I said.

“Not gonna happen,” my agents said. “You’re attached to the baggage handlers show. They’ve already measured you for the futuristic shirt and everything.”

I was devastated. When I read the script for Friends Like Us it was as if someone had followed me around for a year, stealing my jokes, copying my mannerisms, photocopying my world-weary yet witty view of life. One character in particular stood out to me: it wasn’t that I thought I could play “Chandler,” I was Chandler.

But I was also Blaine in L.A.X. 2194. Fuck me, is everyone kidding? Am I the least lucky person on the planet?

It only got worse. Because Friends Like Us was the hot ticket of the season, everyone was reading it, everyone was auditioning for it, and everyone, it seemed, decided that the part of Chandler was exactly like me and came to my apartment to ask me to help them with their auditions. A few even went a long way, based on my choices and my choices alone. Hank Azaria thought it was so good he auditioned for it twice, for the role of Joey. That’s right—he auditioned for it, got passed on, begged and pleaded to go in again, and got passed on again. (Later, Hank would be Phoebe’s romantic interest for a few episodes, performances for which he won an Emmy. I did 237 episodes and won nothing.)

I ended up knowing the script for Friends Like Us pretty much off by heart because I’d practiced it so much with my pals—in fact, there were times I just acted Chandler out for them and told them to copy what I’d done, so sure was I that it was the right way to play him. And still I would call my agents every three or four days begging for a chance.

Now, we are forgetting about Craig Bierko, the hottest ticket in town. One morning, Craig called Hank and me to breakfast, and as we walked in we saw Craig sitting at a table with two scripts open in front of him.

“Guys,” Craig said, “I’ve been offered two shows—Jim Burrows, the hottest director in Hollywood, is directing both. One is called Best Friends, and the other is that one called…”

Wait, don’t say it, please don’t say it …

“… Friends Like Us.”

He had been offered the role of Chandler. It made my head explode.

“And I need you to tell me which one to take.”

My first instinct was to tell him to take his jobs and go fuck himself. But he was a close friend, so Hank and I both obliged. The three of us read those two scripts that morning, though I already knew Friends Like Us off by heart, and it was clear which one he should take. My heart sank, because I knew I was Chandler, but I also wasn’t an asshole. I was crushed. We both told Craig to do Friends Like Us.

(This made me think of an exchange from my episode on Beverly Hills, 90210:

BRANDON: What about friends?

ROGER: Friends? My father says those are the only ones you can’t trust.

BRANDON: Do you always listen to him?

ROGER: No.)

Lunch was winding down and it was time for Craig to tell his agents where his head was at. Hank made his goodbyes and went to the gym, because he was always going to the gym, and I went with Craig as he looked for a pay phone. (No cell phones folks; this was 1994.) The nearest one was outside a Fred Segal store (the same store that weirdly also features in my episode of Beverly Hills, 90210). Craig threw a few coins in the machine, tapped in the numbers, and waited. Eventually they patched him through.

And then, I stood two feet away from Craig and listened to him pick THE OTHER SHOW! I couldn’t believe my fucking ears. So, the new lead of Best Friends and I parted ways. I raced home to make another plea to get an audition for Friends Like Us.

A few weeks later I went to the taping of the pilot for Best Friends—it was funny; Craig was funny, and the lead, which is what he really wanted. Perfectly fine, cute show. But the final role available during the entire pilot season of 1994, Chandler in Friends Like Us, was still not cast. And I was still attached to the fucking futuristic baggage handler show!

You know how sometimes the universe has plans for you that are hard to believe, how the world wants something for you even though you’ve done your best to close off that avenue?

Welcome to my 1994.

NBC producer Jamie Tarses—oh, sweet, magical, much-missed Jamie Tarses—who was helping to develop Friends Like Us, at NBC—apparently turned to her then-husband, Dan McDermott, a Fox TV producer, one night in bed.

“Hey, is the show L.A.X. 2194 going to get picked up?” Jamie reportedly said.

Dan said, “No, it’s awful—for a start, it’s about baggage handlers in the year 2194. They wear futuristic vests.…”

“So, is Matthew Perry available? A safe second position?” Jamie said. (That’s Hollywood-speak for “available.”) (Ironically, Jamie and I dated for several years much later, after she got divorced.)

A couple of days later I got the phone call that would change my life.

“You’re meeting Marta Kauffman about Friends Like Us tomorrow.”

And this is no lie: I knew right then and there just how huge it was all going to be.

Marta Kauffman, along with David Crane, was the person most responsible for what would become Friends. Next day, a Wednesday, I read as Chandler for her, and I broke all the rules—for a start, I didn’t carry any pages of the script (you’re supposed to carry the script with you when you read, because that way, you’re acknowledging to the writers that it’s just a work in progress). But I knew the script so well by this point. Of course, I nailed it. Thursday, I read for the production company, and nailed it, and Friday I read for the network. Nailed it again. I read the words in an unexpected fashion, hitting emphases that no one else had hit. I was back in Ottawa with the Murrays; I got laughs where no one else had.

I was cheering up my mother.

And Chandler was born. This was my part now and there was no stopping it.

The pilot season of 1994 had cast its final actor: Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing.

That phone call at Fred Segal’s, and Craig’s desire to be the star of his own show, rather than be part of an ensemble, saved my life. I don’t know what would have happened to me had the call gone the other way. It is not out of the realms of possibility that I may have ended up on the streets of downtown LA shooting heroin in my arm until my untimely death.

I would have loved heroin—it was my opiate addiction on steroids. I’ve often said that taking OxyContin is like replacing your blood with warm honey. But with heroin, I would imagine, you are the honey. I loved the feeling of opiates, but something about the word “heroin” always scared me. And it is because of that fear that I am still alive today. There are two kinds of drug addicts, the ones who want to go up, and the ones who want to go down. I could never understand the coke guys—why would anyone want to feel more present, more busy? I was a downer guy, I wanted to melt into my couch and feel wonderful while watching movies over and over again. I was a quiet addict, not the bull-in-a-china-shop kind.

Sure, without Friends, I may have had a career as a sitcom writer—I’d already written a pilot called Maxwell’s House, but though I had some skills, it hadn’t sold. But there was no way I could have been a journeyman actor. I wouldn’t have stayed sober for that; it was not worth not doing heroin for that. Friends was such a good and fun job that it curtailed everything for a while at least. I was the second baseman for the New York Yankees. I couldn’t fuck that up. I would never forgive myself.…

When you’re earning $1 million a week, you can’t afford to have the seventeenth drink.

About three weeks before my audition for Friends, I was alone in my apartment on Sunset and Doheny, tenth floor—it was very small, but it had a great view, of course—and I was reading in the newspaper about Charlie Sheen. It said that Sheen was yet again in trouble for something, but I remember thinking, Why does he care—he’s famous?

Out of nowhere, I found myself getting to my knees, closing my eyes tightly, and praying. I had never done this before.

“God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.”

Three weeks later, I got cast in Friends. And God has certainly kept his side of the bargain—but the Almighty, being the Almighty, had not forgotten the first part of that prayer as well.

Now, all these years later, I’m certain that I got famous so I would not waste my entire life trying to get famous. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.