I always remember a teacher when I was in Sixth Form telling us ‘you’ll always remember when the first friend your age dies’. She went on to explain that of course we expect older relatives, people in our lives, and celebrities even to die. But when people your own age die, that’s a shock.
Matthew Perry was neither my exact age or a real friend, but I think her point still stands. There are certain people, certain celebrities you hear have died, and you think ‘sad but I guess that figures’. I think of Sondheim who I shed some tears for, but the man lived a long life, and it was much like a grandparent dying. Matthew Perry, though a decade and a half older, was like of course, a friend dying.
Maybe not a friend but an older sibling. I’m the generation who was on the younger end of Friends airing. I was ten when it first aired in the US, and naturally, it took a while to be on my radar. I first remember it when I was 14 and not cool enough to be watching it yet. But from the age of about 16 to…well just this Saturday in fact, Friends for me have been a constant.
I say until this Saturday. It was just Saturday lunchtime I was watching ‘The One That Could Have Been’ and my god what an accidentally poignant episode to have watched on the last day he was with us. The one that could have been indeed, if only somewhere somehow things could have been different for Matthew Perry.
It’s not for me to dwell on his struggles, or frankly for anyone else to speculate or comment. His struggles are his own, his family’s his close friends. He at least got to tell his story there. I am in fact two thirds of the way through his autobiography, the audiobook that he reads himself. I talked about it in teaching writing students this month- how he becomes in fact the villain of his own tale at times, because after all that’s what addiction does to a person. That book will forever go unfinished now, I can’t face hearing him temporarily overcome all that he did to know how that book truly ends.
But that’s again not what this is about. His struggles are his own, were his own. But it’s what Matthew Perry gave us and left us with that feels more important.
Did you know he loved hockey? Really loved hockey. Passionately like the proper Canadian you might also not know he was. He was an Ottawa Senators fan, so nobody’s perfect, but he loved a sport deeply that I do too. I liked that. It felt poignant too remembering his joy at talking about hockey interviews on a weekend the sport has also been hit with tragedy.
This isn’t about his struggles, but it is because to watch someone you admire overcome, fight, fail, and overcome again. Through decades where you, where thousands of us who loved him, also struggled in our own ways meant something. He tried to help people- he helped Hank Azaria for one, get sober, and dozens more in person. He inspired others or just helped the rest of us going through dark times our own struggles, to get through it by being him.
He was one of those actors who of course was everywhere during my teens and twenties. From questionable romcoms and comedies to the really good (Fools Rush in and Three to Tango are personal favourites). But also, he made one of the most criminally underrated series of the past few decades- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Seek that out and watch it if you never did…I figure he’d like that.
But of course, it was for Chandler Bing that for me like so many others he was special. And while no doubt he wished to escape that somewhat more, I hope deep down he understood a fraction of what Chandler Bing meant, and with him, tied up in that messy way sitcom actors in long running shows do, he too meant something.
It’s because of that, yes, to use the obvious cliche line, I feel like I’ve lost a friend. And it’s because of that- and because I simply cannot write this without crying, I want to say; that it’s okay to mourn the loss of someone who felt like a friend even if they were not.
Chandler means a lot to so many people, for so many reasons. For me yes, the awkward, nerdy, hopefully funny one, I saw myself in Chandler. A bit on the outside of the cooler kids, but always sincere under it. For me too, that the nice guy gets the girl and dream life, felt like something in contrast to the other TV and film messages out there. Chandler too has a bit of a messed up childhood, his mental health is all over the place and before we talked about that stuff (it was the 90s…) there was a lot of me I felt in him.
But beyond that too, personally Chandler was a safe character, but also one that I could ‘love’ and it feel ok…let me explain in the late 90s one of the key school questions was ‘Which friend do you fancy’. There were only in fact 2 correct answers: Joey if you were a girl and Rachel if you were a boy. The trouble is my queer asexual self didn’t ‘fancy’ any of them. But I felt I could be with Chandler. I could marry Chandler. Because I loved his personality, I loved his humour, his care, his kindness and his cleverness. It was in hindsight for me a demisexual crush that I never had words for. But Chandler was the one I ‘fancied’ because also he was safe, Chandler wasn’t the ‘hot’ one but he was the one who wouldn’t intentionally hurt you. For someone who spent their teens wrestling with versions of the ‘Which Friend do you fancy’ question, and never having a ‘right’ answer, never fitting in…Chandler was a safe space to hang onto.
And like so many of us, I’ve kept Friends as a ‘safe space’ all these years, and as I’ve grown up, I’ve realised I do deeply love Chandler as well as identify with him. I feel as an adult the nuanced struggles he goes through- and the depth given to them by Matthew Perry. I hope that I’m 1/10 that funny to my friends. I feel his awkwardness but feel hopeful that if Chandler can ‘win’ in the end, so can I.
Chandler Bing and Matthew Perry have also simply been there for more than half of my life now. And that’s why it’s ok to grieve that. I have a very short list of ‘celebrities’ that I know I’ll be devastated when they die, and most of them are people who were important to me in that magical, terrible period from your teens across your twenties. And one of them was Matthew Perry.
He said people will be shocked, not surprised, at his death. And actually Matthew, I want you to know your fans, the people who loved you (And I mean loved), we’re neither…we’re just devastated. We just already miss you.
Because I can’t watch Chandler Bing right now, not knowing Matthew is no longer here. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I can watch that show that has so much of my heart; that is a safe place to hide. And already I miss him, I miss that person I never met, I feel his loss in the world in the bigger abstract loss to art and humour but also on a personal level. This human who existed, who impacted my life, no longer does. And that’s sad. And it’s okay to be sad, to grieve that loss.
And yes, there are horrible, big important things in the world happening. Yes, there is currently so much loss of life. There are big, important things in the world that need our attention. But it’s also times like these that the people who give us stories that get us through these times are important. Nobody can live their lives only caring about the big things every hour of every day- we need our escapes, we need the people who give us the laughs. And if one of those people dies, we deserve to grieve that and acknowledge the loss, too.
I feel like I’ve lost an older brother, the funny, awkward older brother who you actually think was the coolest person in the world. Matthew Perry wasn’t Chandler Bing, but he gave us Chandler Bing, a person who mattered so much to so many of us.
A footnote as a personal aside for anyone who actually knows me, this news came on the same day as the news of the tragic death of hockey player Adam Johnson. I wrote a separate piece about that, as conflating them didn’t feel right. But they both hit me hard, and I was genuinely upset all day. I probably looked fine then (I had a busy day in London and a lovely one) but I cried in the toilets a few times. I cried at the concert I was at. This isn’t a ‘make it about me’ moment it’s a moment of honesty about how the loss of people we don’t know does in fact affect us deeply sometimes. And that’s ok.
And thank you for writing this too. I read it over lunch getting a tad emotional. I especially get having to not finish listening to his audiobook...😔