The “Friends” star Matthew Perry said his character, Chandler Bing, intentionally got to have the last word on the final episode of the hit sitcom because he asked.
The actor, 54, who died in November after being found unresponsive at his Los Angeles home, recalled the situation in his memoir published last year about filming the final episode, titled “The Last One,” on January 23, 2004.
“Friends,” which ran for 10 seasons on NBC between 1994 and 2004, centered on the lives of six friends living in New York City, played by Perry, David Schwimmer (Ross Geller), Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), and Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani). It was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman.
“Before that final episode, I’d taken Marta Kauffman to one side,” Perry wrote in “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” “‘Nobody else will care about this except me,’ I said. ‘So, may I please have the last line?’ That’s why as we all troop out of the apartment, and Rachel has suggested one last coffee, I got to bring the curtain down on ‘Friends.'”
The finale of “Friends” concluded with Monica and Chandler clearing out their apartment as they prepared to move to the suburbs with their newborn twins named Jack (after Monica and Ross’ dad) and Erica (after her biological mom).
In the empty apartment, the six friends reflected on living there at one time or another and put their keys on the counter.
Then, Rachel asked Monica and Chandler if they had to head to their new home right away. When Monica said that they had some time to spare, Rachel asked if they could get some coffee.
“Sure,” Chandler said before delivering one last sarcastic comment. “Where?”
Then, everyone exited the apartment and presumably went to Central Perk, the often-frequented coffee shop.
“I love the look on Schwimmer’s face as I deliver that line — it’s the perfect mixture of affection and amusement, exactly what the show ‘Friends’ had always given to the world,” Perry wrote in his memoir.
Perry said Aniston and LeBlanc cried after wrapping the finale; meanwhile, he “felt nothing.”
Rather than sob like his costars, Perry said he and his then-girlfriend walked around stage 24 at Warner Bros. in Burbank, California, where “Friends” was filmed, and “sat in the lot for a moment and thought about the previous 10 years.”
“‘Friends’ had been a safe place, a touchstone of calm for me; it had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning, and it had also given me a reason to take it just a little bit easier the night before,” Perry said. “It was the time of our lives. It was like we got some new piece of amazing news every day. Even I knew only a madman (which in many moments I had been nonetheless) would screw up a job like that.”
