Paul Rudd recalls meeting Matthew Perry on the set of Friends and exchanging fond recollections.
In a WSJ Magazine story published on Tuesday, April 1, the Death of a Unicorn star described how, shortly after joining the beloved sitcom’s ensemble in 2002, Perry noticed him strolling by his dressing area and invited him in to play video games.
“I ‘m not really a gamer.” I’m not sure if he was either,” Rudd remembered. “But I remember thinking, this person doesn’t really know me at all, and he’s like, ‘Come on in,’ and we’re just playing video games.”
“When I think of him, I remember that,” Rudd said of Perry, who died in October 2023 from a ketamine overdose at the age of 54.
Rudd, 55, made his debut cameo on Friends early in the ninth season. His character, Mike Hannigan, was introduced as a love interest for Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), and their on-again, off-again relationship continued until the show’s tenth and final season, when they married.
Despite Perry’s warm greeting and Rudd’s long-standing connection with the rest of the ensemble, writers David Crane and Marta Kauffman speculated that Rudd may have felt out of place in the Friends series finale. The actor had a brief appearance in the two-part May 2004 episode, in which Mike and Phoebe decide to begin trying for a baby.
“I know he said he was wondering, ‘Why am I here?'” “It should be just the six of them,” Crane told the Wall Street Journal. “But I believe it was our responsibility to establish that Mike truly is Phoebe’s future.” If you didn’t see him in the program, it would feel like TV bulls—.
“That episode was all about moving on and living a life that may not lead you back here. Kauffman agreed. “He was the guy who was going to make her happy for the rest of her life.”
Rudd did not appear on HBO Max’s much-anticipated Friends reunion special in 2021. “The main nub of the show has got to be about the six cast members,” said the special’s director, Ben Winston, to The Wrap. “There can’t be too many cameos because, of course, there were hundreds of incredible people who appeared on Friends over the years.” Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit everyone in.”
While Winston did not address Rudd explicitly, he did state that recording the reunion during the COVID-19 epidemic was “complicated.”
“Some individuals were unable to travel internationally, others were engaged in different television or film productions, and some were occupied with other commitments,” he informed me.
Nevertheless, Rudd told PEOPLE in November that he rediscovered Friends while watching reruns with his daughter.
“I hadn’t rewatched many of those episodes. But now that she’s watching it, it’s like, ‘Oh, I remember this,’ so I give her a story about it,” Rudd explained. “I’m far enough away from some things now that I can allow myself to be a little nostalgic about it.”