Tributes to Matthew Perry have been a constant since this Sunday it was announced that he had died in the jacuzzi of his home in California. This is what happens when an actor is part of the popular imagination of tens of millions of people: that his death becomes a collective mourning for the laughter and well-being that he had been able to transmit, in this case as Chandler Bing in Friends.
There were 234 episodes. We saw him sharing a flat with ducks, sharing Baywatch afternoons in the living room seats with Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and unexpectedly hooking up with Monica (Courteney Cox) in London, always with a gift for comedy that consisted of be cynical and laugh at others as well as at yourself. In parallel, we were also spectators of his fluctuating health changes derived from a drug addiction that he himself would talk about in the biographical book Friends, Lovers and That So Terrible.
But, after participating in one of the most successful series of all time that allowed him to earn a million dollars per episode for the last two seasons, he tried to repeat the move without much luck, it must be said. The lottery rarely hits you twice on television, although for series fans these projects were always a way to reconnect with one of the most beloved and, above all, closest comedy actors. He was like family.
After a long-standing sitcom, Matthew Perry tried to move on to a more intellectual sense of comedy with Studio 60, with which he joined forces with a person in a similar situation: screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who sought to revalidate the success of The West Wing of the White House and at the same time he was trying to re-enter Hollywood after some media problems with cocaine.
Studio 60 imagined the day-to-day life of a television program similar to Saturday Night Live, the legendary comedy sketch show broadcast live. He shared a cast with Bradley Whitford from The West Wing, a Sarah Paulson who would become a television eminence after participating in American crime story and American horror story, and an Amanda Peet with whom he had already worked on his greatest success in movie theaters, that False appearances with Bruce Willis.
Comedy writers were not enthralled by Sorkin's obsession with educating audiences, but he garnered critical interest. For this reason, when it was canceled after a single season, it automatically became a cult series: between the Sorkin seal, the level of the cast and the meta-television theme, the cocktail was irresistible for any inveterate series fan.
After putting himself in the hands of a prestigious scriptwriter and even ensuring that television renewal that with Friends seemed so easy, Matthew Perry embarked on a project that he himself had helped conceive: Mr Sunshine, a single-camera comedy (that is, without a live audience and shot almost as if it were theater) that he had created with Alex Barnow and Marc Firek. In it, he played the manager of a stadium, the Sunshine Center, where he shared the spotlight with Allison Janney (The West Wing).
Critics wanted to give him a vote of confidence despite the series' difficulties in being openly funny, but the ABC channel, the same one that had Courteney Cox on its payroll with Cougar Town, was not so magnanimous and Mr Sunshine was canceled after 13 episodes.
This is possibly Matthew Perry's most sympathetic attempt to return and, in part, because of the choral nature of the proposal. In Go On, the former Chandler became Ryan King, a sports anchor who, after the death of his wife, is forced to go to group therapy for grief. And there, little by little, the viewer could meet a gang of endearing beings with actors such as Laura Benanti, Suzy Nakamura, Tyler James Williams, Brett Gelman, Julie White or John Cho. It was broadcast on the NBC channel, the same channel as Friends, but its bad streak continued: after one season, it was canceled.
The reviews for The Odd Couple, let's face it, were average to bad because, despite the efforts, it had a sense of humor that critics considered old-fashioned. Matthew Perry got into the project by himself: he is the creator. And, curiously, the screenwriter Joe Keenan who helped him rewrite the pilot episode has left us one of the most interesting anecdotes of this day of mourning.
“I once spent a few afternoons at Matthew Perry's house, rewriting the pilot after his first draft was scrapped by CBS. At one point I told him that when I was stuck on a problem in the story, walking around helped me solve it. Matthew told me: “I can't do this.” Where could he walk alone to think without being mobbed by fans?,” he explained.
But what is striking is his introspection on the person Perry was and where his career moved: “The Odd Couple was never a success. Matthew found it difficult, and her character Oscar was perhaps not the best choice for the irony and self-deprecation that were her greatest comedic gifts. But he was a sweet, funny, honest and vulnerable man who wanted what anyone who has a hit early in his career looks for: a second act.”
“He had it with his book and all the work he did for other addicts. But today I feel sad both for myself and for anyone who loved him because he never had the opportunity to do what he was so incredibly good at,” he lamented.
And, to close the list (because we don't even consider recovering The Kennedys after Camelot), one of his most stimulating sporadic works: his role as Mike Kresteva in the fictional universe of The good wife. He was the lawyer turned politician who was running against Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) to be governor of Illinois, Kresteva for the Republican Party. It was a clear villain role for Perry: he lied about Alicia's (Julianna Margulies) integrity and even went after the family of her rivals.
He appeared in two episodes of the third season, two of the fourth and finally returned in 2017 in the spin-off The good fight. “Very sad for Matthew Perry. He was very fun to work with; and he took his craft very seriously.”
