By Mayank Chhaya-
Anecdotally, especially as it played out on Facebook, ‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry’s death impacted a wide demography of Indians in India and across the world. From those in their late 20s to those in their 60s, there seemed to be a consensus view that Perry, 54, was their favorite Friend.
It is quite unusual that a quintessential New York show with very often New York-specific humor should have enjoyed the kind of global success that ‘Friends’ did when it first aired between 1994 and 2004 and has lately enjoyed in a major revival of interest among a whole new generation of viewers. And within that, it is even more remarkable that Perry’s character Chandler Bing with his sardonic wit delivered in a style that became uniquely his own should have become the most cherished among Indian/global viewers. There were those in India who said they considered ‘Friends’ their comfort shows and in it, Perry a particular draw.
It is a measure of ‘Friends’s ubiquity in the pop culture landscape that I ended up watching all its seasons without consciously seeking to do so. While all the six main ‘Friends’ characters—Perry as Bing, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller and Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay—were equally memorably etched out, Perry as Bing seemed a little more equal. Much of that had to do with his character’s droll sense of humor created by the brilliant writers of the show. Add to that the way Perry executed that sense of humor. More often than not his one-liners came across as a reflex action as if there was a button in him which when pushed would invariably deliver a trademark Chandler Bing punchline.
Although a lot of the credit for Perry’s ‘Friends’ character ought to go to the writers, it was also elevated by him the way he came to inhabit that persona. So much so that in his media interviews viewers would half expect him to wisecrack the way he did in the show. On quite a few occasions, he did not let the viewers down. Among many such appearances, he told the story about a hilarious encounter with someone he thought was the filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan on the hugely popular Graham Norton Show some seven years ago. Although he recounted the story as Matthew Perry, one could see shades of Chandler Bing lurking out in between, including the way in which he delivered the punchlines.
Although humorous lines or humorous situations were equitably distributed among the ‘Friends’ cast throughout its ten years, Matthew Perry seemed to have made the most of it through his memorable portrayal of Chandler Bing. At the height of the show’s success all six stars were paid a million dollars an episode. That meant money was not a problem for him and the other five but his long addiction to drugs and alcohol frequently sent him to rehab, which he once famously said he had likely spent a total of $9 million on. “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he told The New York Times around this time last year to coincide with the publication of his very well received memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” In it, he candidly talks about his many problems with drug addiction.
The memoir begins powerfully with these words, “Hi, my name is Matthew although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
The “I should be dead” part relates to his near fatal health scare when his colon exploded sending him in the grip of what he described in the memoir as “the Pain” with the capital P because of its intensity. “I capitalize Pain because this was the worst Pain I’ve ever experienced—It was the Platonic Ideal of Pain, the exemplar. I have heard people claim that the worst pain is childbirth: well, this was the worst pain imaginable, but without the joy of a newborn in my arms at the end of it,” he wrote.
I could fully identify with Matthew Perry’s pain, having suffered something eerily similar myself because of a toxic colon caused by a condition called diverticulitis. Quite like Perry a stage came for me as well when it was so unbearable that I fainted on the hospital floor. Again, like him, I had to go for emergency surgery that lasted over five hours to his seven. Finally, very much like him, I too had a cesarian section type of six plus inches of cut across my abdomen. He was right about the intensity of the Pain.
It is extraordinary how a single television sitcom can make an actor a global star cutting across demographics and culture and in the process cause genuine anguish in his death. In that sense, Matthew Perry had a dream albeit relatively short life.
