Matthew Perry reveals rendezvous with Julia Roberts
Friends actor Matthew Perry has opened up about his heated rendezvous with Julia Roberts…and other actresses.
Perry found himself on the receiving end of Roberts’ flirty messages before he found out that she only agreed to appear in Friends if they shared the storyline.
The sitcom’s co-creator urged Perry to get in touch with Roberts and “woo” her to join the series.
“I had to woo her. I wanted something a tad flirty. I sent her three dozen red roses and the card read, ‘The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers’.
“Her reply was that if I adequately explained quantum physics to her, she’d agree to be on the show.
“The following day I sent her a paper all about wave-particle duality and entanglement, and only some of it was metaphorical.
“Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift: Bagels — lots and lots of bagels.”
The pair continued to communicate via fax for three months before Roberts appeared at Perry’s doorstep.
In Perry’s new memoir Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing, he revealed that he would be rushing home to see if Roberts had faxed him back.
“This was pre-internet, pre-cell phones. All our exchanges were done by fax,” he wrote.
“I was grinning like some 15-year-old on his first date. And we had never even spoken yet, much less met each other.”
One fateful fax later, Roberts told Perry to call him and he realised that they had fallen for each other.
Later that week, Roberts appeared at his doorstep and their relationship blossomed into a whirlwind romance.
“I let her in, both figuratively and literally, and a relationship began. We would already be a couple by the time we started filming the Friends Super Bowl episode.”
Then on New Year’s Eve in 1996, Roberts took Perry to a mountain hideaway in New Mexico on her private jet to her mountain hideaway to meet her family.
But soon things took a turn with Perry unable to tame his demons and the thought of dating Julia Roberts became too much.
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me.
“I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.
“I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face.”
Later in his memoir, Perry went on to reveal that he was also interested in Jennifer Anniston but she only wanted to be friends.
He admitted that things were awkward on set but eventually he moved on from her lack of interest in him.
And in 1994, before Friends hit the world by storm, Perry met Gwyneth Paltrow at a party in Massachusetts and the pair made out.
“We slipped off into a broom cupboard and made out,” he revealed.
“This was the last summer of my life when I could make out at a party with a beautiful young woman called Gwyneth and no one, save Gwyneth and I, cared.”
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