Matthew Perry Doesn’t Want To Do A ‘Friends’ Reunion, Focusing On Playwriting

Matthew Perry, best known for playing the hilariously awkward Chandler Bing on Friends, has said he has no interest in participating in a Friends reunion show.

MATTHEW PERRY WON’T DO A FRIENDS REUNION

His reasoning, however, is less than satisfying. “I have this recurring nightmare – I’m not kidding about this. When I’m asleep, I have this nightmare that we do Friends again and nobody cares,” the actor told Variety. “We do a whole series, we come back, and nobody cares about it. So if anybody asks me, I’m gonna say no. The thing is: We ended on such a high. We can’t beat it. Why would we go and do it again?”

The latter part of his response is more acceptable, with the acclaim the show received during and since its 10-year run, it would certainly be difficult to improve upon it. For now, Perry is focusing on writing and theater. After being on comedy TV for years, the actor wants to do something more serious. “People still see me as Chandler, the goofy, sarcastic guy, and this is not that,” Perry described. “I don’t think that anybody’s out there thinking, ‘I’ll write this for Perry,’ other than me. So I did that, and I think probably the next thing I do will be written by me, too. In the second half of my life, I don’t want to do your standard sitcom television. I want to do edgier, darker, dramatic stuff.”

Currently, Perry has a play on stage in London called The End of Longing, which was unfortunately panned by most critics. It opens tonight in New York at the off Broadway Lucille Lortel Theatre. The story is fairly personal, and is based off the actor’s struggle with addiction. “It’s personal, but it’s an exaggerated form of me,” Perry says. “Jack, the character I play, is a much different drunk than I was. What the play aims to do is tell a couple of messages. The main one is that there’s a popular notion out there that people don’t change, but I don’t believe that’s true. All of the characters in this play change and become better. That’s a big message. And also, I try to use humor as a device to tell a story about addiction and how difficult it is to overcome.”