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Matthew Perry Q&A - Radio Times, July 2007 |
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The former Friend is sticking with the funny business - so why's he playing it with a straight face? Jenny Eden finds out.
JE: After the phenomenal success of
Friends, you don't need to work
again, so why do another show?
MP: Pure desperation and fear of being…
No, the truthful answer is, I was
a huge fan of The West Wing and
A Few Good Men, so when I heard
that Aaron Sorkin had written a
new show and that it took place in
a world that I knew something about,
I wanted to read it. And by the time
I'd finished reading it, I knew that
I was going to try as hard as I could
to be a part of it.
Isn't making a TV show about
making a TV show when
television starts to eat itself?
This is a very bizarre industry we exist
in, where no-one expects the truth.
You are being lied to all day long,
and it's somehow just all right. This is
a show about the kind of people who
aspire to beat that, who aspire to
be better than that.
How hard was it to say goodbye
to Chandler Bing in Friends?
It was a nice feeling of
accomplishment of a job well done.
But afterwards, I did want to change
things a bit. This guy is a comedy
writer but he's not the kind of neurotic,
over-the-top-character Chandler was.
Is it a relief not to have to be the
funny guy any more?
It's a relief to escape the rhythm of
a sitcom like Friends, with three jokes
to each page. I was never comfortable
with that. If we said a joke that didn't
work, the writers would get together
and fix it, but I would always start
sweating and be nervous, like we're
never going to make it funny.
Are you ever tempted to throw
in a gag in the new show?
On every other job I've ever done,
for better for worse, I've rolled up
my sleeves and gone, "OK, how
can we make this funnier?" But
with Aaron's writing, you have to be
word-perfect. If the line is "He has
not" and I say, "He hasn't", that's not
OK. It's all about the rhythm of the
words. That's why you work 14-
or 15-hour days, then go
home and, by the time you
unbutton your shirt, it's
time to go back to work.
Quite different to life
on a sitcom then?
Friends was the closest
an actor can come to
having a normal life;
it was basically a
nine-to-five job. This
is night-and-day
different. I have to
stock in Red Bull: my
character drinks it
all the time; I drink
it all the time.
One final question: having been
one of the world's six best-loved
comedy actors, how hard is it
to keep your ego in check?
I've also been on the least-watched
television show in the history
of television and the most
watched, and neither really did
what I thought it would do to my
life. You can't identify yourself with
the big accolades or the big, over-the-top successes. I was on a Fox
show called Second Chance, which
ranked 92nd out of 93 shows, and I
was walking around with attitude.
I was nicer when I was on the
number-one show.
**
Now take a look at our full Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip guide.
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