Matthew Perry Once Opened Up About Dark Side of Chandler And Monica’s Wedding Episode From 'Friends'

Although Friends ended years ago, one episode, Matthew Perry's character Chandler Bing's wedding to his on-screen girlfriend Monica Geller, is an episode fans keep returning to. 

Perry's character on-screen makes it impossible to believe the kind of personal turmoil he was in at the time. When the filming for Season 7 was going on, Perry revealed in his book Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, that he was trying to get sober. He revealed he had to be picked up by a sober technician to be taken back to a rehab center, per The Things.

Perry remembered being transferred from his rehab facility to the Promises treatment center located in Malibu, where he was informed that he would require an additional "months" to fully recuperate, per TODAY. "Two weeks later, I was driven to the set of Friends by a technician from Malibu. When I arrived, Jen Aniston said, 'I’ve been mad at you,'" he wrote. "'Honey,' I said, 'if you knew what I’d been through, you would not be mad at me.'"

Perry then shared that the two "hugged" and he "got the work done." Then, he revealed, "I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician." The moment was one of the toughest in Perry's career, given the importance of the scene in the Friends storyline. "Not all the lights were green on Sunset that night, let me tell ya," he added.

One of Perry's co-stars, Jennifer Aniston, who played the iconic Rachel Green on the show, made an effort to support him amid his struggles off-screen by telling him to seek assistance. After Perry disclosed his experiences, Aniston acknowledged she was unaware of the true extent of Matthew's problems. "I didn't understand the level of anxiety and self-torture that was put on Matthew Perry if he didn't get that laugh; and the devastation that he felt. Which makes a lot of sense."

Perry's situation didn't improve even after his mid-season 7 rehab stay; he even shared that he felt "dead inside" while filming the season finale. It's obvious that the actors had a very close relationship even off the screen, and you can only imagine how emotional filming was.

“We had made 237 episodes, including this last one, called, appropriately enough, The Last One. Jennifer Aniston was sobbing — after a while, I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body. Even Matt LeBlanc was crying,” he wrote, adding that he “felt nothing.”

“I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside,” he added.