Matthew Perry has admitted he found working on Friends ‘difficult’ due to the crushes he developed on his female co-stars.
From 1994 until 2004, the actor starred as Chandler Bing in the widely-celebrated sitcom, finding fame among an ensemble cast that also included Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer.
The 53-year-old has recently been on the promotional trail for his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, during which he’s opened up about his life-threatening struggles with substance abuse and his close relationships with his fellow cast members.
Having revealed in his book that Rachel Green actor Jennifer once turned him down when he asked her out on a date, Matthew added in a new interview that he also had crushes on Courteney and Lisa, who played Monica Geller and Phoebe Buffay respectively.
Speaking to Diane Sawyer for ABC News, Matthew said that Lisa ‘is the funniest, maybe the funniest person I’ve ever worked with, and just sees the world in a really funny way’.
Speaking about how he was rejected by Jennifer years ago, Diana called her one of his ‘serial crushes’.
‘Well, how can you not have a crush on Jenny, and Courteney, and Lisa?’ he responded.
‘So it made it kind of difficult to go to work, because I had to pretend that I didn’t.’
In his book, Matthew mentioned how on the set of Friends, he was left wondering how long he could get away with looking at Jennifer.
‘Yes! I was like, is three seconds too long? How long is… and then I write in the gratitude part about her letting me do that,’ he told Diane.
The 17 Again actor recently recalled how Jennifer confronted him about his drinking while they were on Friends together, saying that he was ‘really grateful’ to her that she intervened.
‘Jenny said “We know you’re drinking.” Imagine how scary a moment that was,’ he told Diane.
‘She was the one that reached out the most and I’m really grateful to her for that.’
He added that ‘secrets kill you’, warning: ‘Secrets kill people like me.’
‘At the time I should have been the toast of the town. I was in a dark room meeting nothing but drug dealers and completely alone,’ he stated.
Matthew Perry’s interview with Diane Sawyer is set to air today at 8pm ET in the US on ABC.
