George Clooney reveals he was very close with Matthew Perry during ‘Friends’ struggles

George Clooney has been promoting his latest directorial effort The Boys In The Boat, and in a new interview with Deadline, he looks back to his time on the NBC set of ER when he was just a soundstage away from the set of Friends, starring the late Matthew Perry.

According to George, he had known Matthew since he was an aspirational teenager and revealed that when Matthew achieved his dream of starring in a major sitcom, it didn’t bring him happiness.

“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old,” Clooney told Deadline. “We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid. He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.’”

He continued, “And he got on probably one of the best ever. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him.”

He added, “We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”

George famously guest starred on an episode of Friends from that first 1994 season with ER costar Noah Wylie, where, tongue-in-check, they played doctors in an ER treating the characters of Rachel and Monica.

He goes on to say that he, along with the entire cast of ER, share an unbreakable bond with the cast of Friends, saying, “When we look back at it, and particularly with the Friends cast who we have this great affinity for because we’re close to them still, is how incredibly lucky we all got.”

The links between George Clooney and the Friends cast didn’t end with their close soundstages. George became very close with Brad Pitt and the two have collaborated on several movies, most notably the Ocean’s 11 franchise. Pitt ended up marrying Friends star Jennifer Aniston during the run of Friends. In addition, George has worked with Julia Roberts on several projects, and Julia not only dated Matthew Perry, but also guest-starred on the massively popular sitcom.

Matthew Perry, who hailed from Ottawa, Ontario, died on October 28 when first responders found him unresponsive in the hot tub at his LA  home. On December 15, the LA County Medical Examiner’s report revealed that Perry had died from “the acute effects of ketamine,” and an accidental drowning, and his death was ruled an accident.

The Deadline interview contains other interview anecdotes from George Clooney’s reflections on Hollywood. George also goes into detail about nepotism and the current dialogue over nepo-babies, and he speaks about the paltry residual cheques that actors receive from their work on television. He also speaks about getting The Boys in the Boat made during the pandemic. You can read the entire interview here.