Matthew Perry Reveals He Had a Crush on 'Friends' Co-star Jennifer Aniston and Explains Why He Gave up on Her

Matthew Perry made a surprising revelation while speaking about his upcoming memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The 53-year-old actor confessed that he had a crush on his Friends costar Jennifer Aniston. It happened when the two met two years before the show started. "There was such severe indifference from her that I ended it," he said playfully, according to PEOPLE. "I think everybody probably figured it out. I never said anything. And I hid it. But then she married Brad Pitt, and I was like, 'I don't think I have a chance here.'"

The actor also opened up about his time on the show and how he struggled with addiction. Perry played 'funny guy' Chandler Bing on the show and was just 24 years old when he started. Perry said he was  "just a guy desperate for fame, thinking that fame would fix everything. I was just 'on' all the time." But it didn't.  "The fact that I would trade it all to not have this disease is true. But I don't belittle how fun the experience has been on Friends," he said. "And the money was amazing. Just the creative experience of being on Friends probably saved my life. When you're making a million dollars a week, you can't drink the 37th drink. You have to go home and go to sleep…. That was the greatest job in the world."

Having a wonderful cast also helped the actor. "It's a group that really is close and tight-knit," Perry said, adding, "and loves each other." "They were understanding, and they were patient," he said. "It's like penguins. In nature, when one is sick or very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up and walk around until that penguin can walk on its own. And that's kind of what the cast did for me."

During HBO Max's Friends: The Reunion special  Aniston, Perry, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer reminisced their time on the show. During the reunion, Perry revealed that he would sweat and "go into convulsions" on the set of Friends if the studio audience didn't laugh at the jokes he delivered as Chandler. "To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn't laugh," he said. "And it's not healthy, for sure." Aniston later said she was surprised that her former costar was going through such a hard time. "I didn't understand the level of anxiety and self-torture [that] was put on Matthew Perry, if he didn't get that laugh, and the devastation that he felt," she told the TODAY show.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing will be released on November 1.

References:

https://people.com/tv/matthew-perry-says-friends-cast-rallied-around-him-at-height-of-his-addiction/

https://www.today.com/popculture/jennifer-aniston-imagines-friends-episode-spent-quarantine-t223689

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Jon Koplaff/