The funny thing in Hollywood is that you meet people at events all the time, so I’d met Matthew before we acted together [in the 2003 London production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago]. But when we were first rehearsing, I wanted to chat to him properly. I was going for lunch with my family, and I remember calling him, saying, do you mind coming to meet us, and he was so easy about it. The restaurant put us in the back away from people, but when he walked in… the whole place lit up. The whole place smiled.
Matthew was so lovely with my family, but also told me immediately how terrified he was to do this play, as was I. We felt that vulnerability, being people who weren’t theatre actors putting ourselves up on stage when everybody knew us and was ready to judge us. It’s funny when you forge a connection over fear, but we did that summer.
We were pretty young, in our early 30s, just having a really good time. We hung out in Hyde Park in the sunshine eating ice-creams. I took him to a friend’s wedding, where he could chat with pretty girls and be normal. We also bonded over tennis and went to Wimbledon lots – the only trouble being we couldn’t make it back from there in time for the theatre, so I’d make him get these mad lifts on the back of a motorbike from Addison Lee. Matthew would say: “We can’t do that. We’re definitely going to die.” But we didn’t, speeding through London with our helmets on. We had that perfect feeling of enjoying England in the summertime.
Matthew was one of the quickest people you would ever come across, ruthlessly funny in the ways he’d react to people. He wouldn’t let you get away with anything. Invariably, I would tell really long stories and he’d always do this brilliantly timed bit where he’d nod off in the middle – so funny – but he wasn’t mean in any way. He was the most self-deprecating person and really kind. Anyone who asked him for help, he would help.
Since Matthew wrote his beautiful book [2022’s Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing], everybody knows about his struggles with addiction. I found it incredibly hard to read and had to put it down and pick it up again – it felt unbearable, how much he suffered. He had been in a good place when we were doing the play, but the thing about him was he was like a light. He was one of those people who just made other people feel good. Somehow, they don’t suck you down into their sadness, or their pain, and I know now that his pain was great.
That summer, he was also loving exploring this world outside Friends [which finished a year later in 2004], very deliberately living and working as an actor. And Matthew, we mustn’t forget, was a very good actor. I recently looked at the reviews for our play – and his were all really good, apart from one. I remember his reaction to it: “Some people only want Chandler, and I don’t know that I’m allowed to be anything other than that.” That character was going to be iconic and beloved for ever, but clearly, there was so much more to him. See the dramatic aspects he brings out in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the Scott Silveri sitcom Go On, exploring talents that were so much deeper and darker.
But he knew that Friends was never going to let him go. It was a pretty tight yoke. Part of Matthew’s inner struggle was that he was so closely identified with a role that was also beloved to him – one that he was so good at. But it also held him in a specific place, so it felt like a tug of war. I also think if you struggle with addiction and you have this extraordinary, rarefied life where people love you so completely, it’s always difficult to come to terms with the possibility of your fallibility.
We saw each other after that in Malibu, where we both lived – we’d bump into each other in the little market where you get coffee on the weekend, and it was always so good to see him. I last saw him on his book tour last year. It was such a relief hearing him say that by putting all that tough stuff out there, he’d exorcised it in a way. I’m incredibly grateful that he got to have the experience of how much people loved that book, and loved him, outside of Friends. Ultimately, it seemed like a positive thing.
You know people say don’t meet your idols? Everything that we loved about Chandler was in there in Matthew, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. He was that funny, charming and self-deprecating, but also much more. He had such a wealth of soul.
