Conan O’Brien recalls feeling jealous of the late Matthew Perry when his former girlfriend, Lisa Kudrow, praised Perry’s comedic skills on Friends.
O’Brien, 61, made the confession during Kudrow’s appearance on the July 21 episode of his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. He recalled that his ex, whom he dated from 1988 to 1993, had been wowed by Perry in Friends’ earliest stages.
“You called me up, and you were raving about … ” O’Brien remembered as Kudrow, 60, finished his sentence, saying, “Matthew.”
“Yes. And you were saying, ‘He’s so funny,’” he continued, admitting, “There was a part of me that was jealous.” Though O’Brien said he was able to make Kudrow “laugh pretty hard,” back then she told the comedian, “No, you don’t understand. This guy’s really [funny].’”
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O’Brien eventually shared that view after observing Perry in his breakout role as wise-cracking Chandler Bing on the iconic sitcom, which aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004. Perry died in October 2023 from the “acute effects of ketamine,” according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office. The 54-year-old’s death was ruled an accident.
Kudrow, who played free-spirited Phoebe Buffay, told O’Brien that, for years, “I used to not be able to watch [Friends] at all. I mean, I’d see it on and be mildly interested, and then I’d see me and say, ‘That’s enough of that. I can’t bear it.’ And then well, listen. After Matthew died, I could start watching the show again because it wasn’t about me. It had to do with him for some reason.”
“And so I have started watching Friends,” the Emmy-winning actress continued, adding that “there are marathons on, and I have spent, at times, since he died all day long watching the show.”
Before joining the cast, “I thought that Chandler character, when I read it, I went, ‘Oh, they have a gay character, that’s good,’” she recalled. “And so at the table read, I just did a double take at [Perry]. Oh my god: That I never even in a million years could have envisioned anyone playing the character like that and with his own rhythm and everything. It’s his own.”
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O’Brien called Perry’s comic timing “impeccable.” (After splitting from Kudrow, O’Brien attended her wedding to Michel Stern in 1995. She and Stern have a son, Julian, 26. The former late-night talk show host, for his part, went on to marry Liza Powel in 2002. The pair share daughter Neve, 20, and son Beckett, 18.)
Kudrow spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her Friends heyday in June.
“You’re just laughing all day long, basically, in between the scenes, because these are funny people,” she said. “And especially someone like Matthew, whose goal was: How many laughs can I get in real life every day? So we were always laughing so hard, tears were flying out of our faces.”
