Matthew Perry May Have Saved Entire Friends by Refusing to Do This One Thing

Summary

• Friends is one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.
• The show could've looked entirely different.
• Matthew Perry's refusal to shoot one particular scene made Friends the show we love.

It's been almost thirty years since Friends premiered, but it remains one of the most popular sitcoms in television history. Revolving around a group of six friends navigating their personal and professional lives in NYC, the show offered audiences plenty of comic relief and fascinating storytelling throughout its extensive ten-season run. Remarkably, however, despite its enormous popularity, it never had a spin-off.

Perhaps this had to do with the fact that the cast of Friends were major stars by the time the sitcom ended. More importantly, the actors were admittedly tired of the roles they had dedicated a decade of their lives to. And indeed, their characters were universally beloved all over the world. But things might have been different if Matthew Perry hadn't intervened in the writing process midway through the sitcom.

Matthew Perry's Legacy

It's only been a few weeks since the news of the actor's untimely passing broke. Naturally, many people who worked with the star are paying tribute to him by remembering his work. For example, Perry's co-star from Friends recently revealed that the actor changed the entire direction of the sitcom and made it what we know it to be.

According to Lisa Cash, the actress who played a flight attendant in the twenty-third episode of season 5 of Friends, she was supposed to portray a completely different character on the show. Originally, Cash was cast to play a woman with whom Chandler would cheat on Monica during their fight in Vegas. But Perry understood that this would destroy his character's reputation for good and asked the writers to scrap the scene altogether.

Las Vegas Hotel Affair

The scene was supposed to follow Chandler and Monica's argument over having lunch with her ex Richard. Bing would go up to his room and order room service. Meanwhile, Cash's character would be the one to bring it up there. And they would have an affair. But fortunately, it never made it to the screen, and the actress was recast as the flight attendant.

'We had rehearsed it and everything,' Lisa Cash said in an interview. 'The day before we were shooting in front of a live audience, I was told that Perry went to the writers and said the audience would never forgive [Chandler] for cheating on Monica. He was probably right! That would've changed possibly the course of the show and his character.'

Certainly, that would've changed the direction of the entire sitcom. And who knows if Chandler and Monica would have been the happy couple at the end of the show as we remember them?

Source: TMZ.