Because he was already committed to appearing in a different sitcom pilot, “L.A.X. 2194,” Perry initially settled for coaching other actor friends on how to play Chandler for their auditions. “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,” he wrote.
But even with Perry’s assistance, Chandler’s delivery did not land the same. “No one could do it,” Crane told Vanity Fair. After “L.A.X. 2194” failed to get picked up, Perry won the role that would make him famous.
Some aspects of Chandler Bing were autobiographical morsels mined from the show’s writers — a bit of Crane’s personality plus experiences borrowed from the writers Jeff Greenstein (who once held a dubious data-processing job) and Jeff Strauss (whose parents announced their divorce at Thanksgiving). But much of the character’s personality, like his discomfort with silence and need to fill it with quips, came directly from Perry.
Once he made it through a week of auditions and callbacks, “Chandler was born,” he wrote. At first, the writers would underline words in the script that they hoped Perry would emphasize, but they learned that he would just emphasize a different word instead, so they started underlining the words they didn’t want him to emphasize. “It was a funny process,” Kauffman said in an interview with Vulture. They also sometimes invited Perry to improve upon their punchlines and suggest new ones, as seen in a 1999 Discovery Channel documentary about the show.
Eventually, though, Perry got sick of using his trademark cadence. “Could it be more annoying?” he asked in his memoir. It felt played out. Most of the characters had already mocked Chandler for it. “If I had to put the emphasis in the wrong place one more time, I thought I’d explode,” he wrote.
He considered begging the producers for a reprieve, though he ultimately just went back to saying the lines normally. But it was too late: Chandler-speak had permeated the culture in America and beyond. Language teachers have credited “Friends” with helping people around the world learn English, a claim echoed by international celebrities like the Korean pop star RM, from BTS, and the Cuban and Spanish actress Ana de Armas. (“Could I be any better at English?” de Armas joked during her April monologue on “Saturday Night Live.”)
Whatever his feelings about his trademark during “Friends,” Perry in recent years seemed to have made his peace with it. Earlier in the pandemic, he promoted T-shirts that read “Could I be any more vaccinated?” He also had a little fun at his own expense in his memoir, writing that he imagined his epitaph might be: “Here lies Matthew Perry — He Broke Up With Julia Roberts, or Could I Be More Stupid or Dead?” It’s a funny line, but one that’s harder to laugh at this week.
Jennifer Vineyard
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