Julia Roberts Made a Bit of an Odd Request Before Appearing on ‘Friends’
It was all part of her flirtationship with Matthew Perry.
Julia Roberts’ cameo on Friends was nothing short of iconic. In a 1996 episode, she played a former classmate of Matthew Perry‘s character Chandler, whom she eventually leaves stranded in a bathroom stall wearing nothing but her underwear. Even though the episode was a huge success (becoming the all-time most-watched episode of the hit series), it apparently took some convincing to get Roberts to make the appearance. Oh and that flirty chemistry between her and Perry on the show? That was happening in real life, too.
Kevin Bright, the series’ co-creator told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published January 28th that when Perry asked the Pretty Woman star to be on the show, “She wrote back to him, ‘Write me a paper on quantum physics and I’ll do it.'” And, well, if Julia Roberts asks you to do something, you do it.
“My understanding is that Matthew went away and wrote a paper and faxed it to her the next day,” Bright said.
Alexa Junge, a former Friends writer, said the two actors got very “flirty over faxing” with each other and Perry sought some help from the show’s writers. “She was giving him these questionnaires like, ‘Why should I go out with you?’ And everyone in the writers’ room helped him explain to her why,” she said. “He could do pretty well without us, but there was no question we were on Team Matthew and trying to make it happen for him.”
And it did. Another former Friends writer, Jeff Astrof, remembered standing on the sidelines with Roberts during filming and watching the actress be charmed by Perry. “She kept saying, ‘Chandler’s so funny!’ And I’m like, ‘I wrote every one of those lines!’ I don’t know if she fell in love with Matthew on the spot but they soon started dating.”
Perry and Roberts dated from 1995 to 1996 and kept their relationship very private, which means there, unfortunately, aren’t many pictures to document it. So, we’ll just have to file the nostalgic memory away with all the other lost couples of the ’90s (looking at you, Jen and Brad) and keep watching Season 2, Episode 13 of Friends.
