Jesse Tyler Ferguson remembered Matthew Perry on the latest episode of his podcast, Dinner’s On Me. The Modern Family star invited Lisa Kudrow, who is busy promoting her new project, No Good Deed.
As the actors got talking, Kudrow spilled beans on her equation with the Friends cast members and also remembered the funniest of all, Matthew Perry.
As the conversation escalated, Tyler Ferguson recalled having an interaction with the late actor, who advised the former on how to correctly deliver the jokes in order to ensure that the audience had received them well.
In talks with Kudrow, the actor revealed that Perry had paid a visit to his set, which was built on the exact location of where the Friends set stood for 10 years. Ferguson and his cast members were taping for the scenes of The Class when the 17 Again star stepped in to watch the filming as he was dating one of Jesse’s co-stars at the time.
The Ugly Betty star went on to reveal, “I think Matthew Perry came to one of our tapings one night.”
He further added, “He was in between scenes and there were scenes that weren’t going well. The writers do that thing where if a joke doesn’t land, they all huddle and come up with a new blow for the joke and they come over and spit it out to you and you have to memorize it really quickly and if you start to go off on the wrong words or with the wrong punchline, [director] Jimmy Burrows stops you so you don’t ruin the joke. It’s a high-stress situation.”
Emphasizing the advice given to him by the late Hollywood star, the podcast host recalled that Perry came to him and said, “I think it was a joke for me, actually, and I was having a really hard time nailing it.”
Ferguson further stated, “Matthew came up to me and said, ‘We would have this joke when were shooting Friends: when things didn’t work out, we would always say, Oh, you can hear the traffic on Barnum.'”
Kudrow immediately quipped to correct the podcaster, stating that it was Barham, the street outside of the studio.
The actor claimed that Perry helped him gain confidence again and that “it was a very special time just because I was overlapping with these people who were such titans to me.”
Matthew Perry passed away in October 2023 and was laid to rest in Los Angeles. The Friends cast members reunited for Perry’s funeral.
