Could he be more charming?
Matthew Perry struggled to convince Julia Roberts to star in the 1996 one-hour episode after the “Friends” Super Bowl.
“Matthew invited her to join the program,” executive producer Kevin Bright told The Hollywood Reporter. “She replied to him: ‘Write me an article on quantum physics and I will do it.’ My understanding is that Matthew went out and wrote an article and faxed it to her the next day. “
The Hollywood Reporter interviewed the successful show’s producers, writers and staff before their new reboot on the epic episode starring Roberts, Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, Jean Claude van Damme and revealed that Perry struggled to win the Oscar winner.
Roberts and Perry got along by fax.
They may have met before the episode, but she was interested in him from afar because he is so charming, ”said writer Alexa Junge. “There was a lot of flirting because of the fax. She was giving him questionnaires like, ‘Why should I go out with you?’ And everyone in the writers’ room helped explain why. He could have done very well without us, but there was no doubt that we were on Team Matthew and trying to make it happen for him. “
Apparently, the extra help worked. During filming, co-writer Jeff Astrof recalled: “She kept saying, ‘Chandler is so funny!’ And I said, ‘I wrote each of those lines!’ I don’t know if she fell in love with Matthew at the time, but they soon started dating. I felt like the cyrano [de Bergerac]. Like, ‘Chandler is going to date Julia Roberts and I’m going home with my horrible girlfriend.’ “
Meanwhile, Brooke Shields did not have such a pleasant experience, thanks to her then boyfriend (whom she would later marry) Andre Agassi.
Director Michael Lembeck told The Hollywood Reporter that the tennis star was particularly upset about a scene in which Shields licked Matt LeBlanc’s fingers.
“Brooke was with Andre Agassi at the time,” recalls Lembeck. “He shows up on the night of the shoot and sits in the audience with the biggest burger bodyguard. She does the scene where she starts to lick Matt’s hand. Then I watch him go down, pull Brooke aside and disembowel her because he is crazy jealous. She is reduced to tears! I interrupted the show for a while, and the girls pulled Brooke aside and loved her, took care of her and put her back on stage. She did very well because of the support of those three. He was an idiot. “