They may have been friends for decades, but Jennifer Aniston learned something new about former Friends co-star Matthew Perry during theirrecent reunion.
During Friends: The Reunion, Perry, 51, revealed that he used to “go into convulsions” if the studio audience didn’t laugh at his jokes when they taped the show.
“To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh,” the actor, who portrayed Chandler Bing, said in the HBO Max special. “And it’s not healthy, for sure.”
During the special, Lisa Kudrow said, “You didn’t tell us that then.”
“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,” Aniston, 52, said on the Today show this week. “[But it] makes a lot of sense.”
Additionally after the special, some viewers shared their concerns and questions about the status of Perry’s health.
Director Ben Winston spoke out against “unkind” comments about the actor, telling Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast, “He was great. People can sometimes just be unkind. I wish they weren’t. I loved working with him. He’s a brilliantly funny man and I thought he had some great one-liners in the show. I felt just happy and lucky to be in his presence and directing him on something like this.”
In another interview withTHR, Friends executive producer and director Kevin Bright added, “I talked to [Matthew]. It was great seeing him again. And what people say is what people say. I don’t have any to say about that, except it was great to see him. And I think he’s very funny on the show. But yes, I think he’s OK. He seems stronger and better since the last time I saw him, and excited about going forward.”
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Perry had opened up about his health battles in recent years, sharing in September 2018 that he had spent three months in a Los Angeles hospital following surgery to repair a gastrointestinal perforation.
