How On-Screen Rivals Matthew Perry And Tom Selleck Got Along Behind The Scenes Of Friends

In a Season 2 storyline, Tom Selleck’s character Richard pals around with Chandler and Joey, emulating his new friends. During this process, Selleck discovered that reproducing Matthew Perry’s Chandler-speak was difficult for him and asked Perry for a tutorial. “Matt told me: ‘It’s a joke, Tom. It’s the way he says it,’” Selleck informed USA Today. “During that whole show, I kept going up to him asking, ‘Can you say it again?’”

Chandler’s vocal stylings were intuitive to Perry, and he used them in his “Friends” audition. Perry developed this technique of stressing unexpected words as a kid, and he continued when he noted that it was successful in making people laugh. “I was talking in a way that no one had talked in sitcoms before, hitting odd emphases, picking a word in a sentence you might not imagine was the beat,” Perry explained in his memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big, Terrible Thing” (via Deadline). While Perry’s creative approach imbued his lines with added humor, Chandler’s speaking style got so popular that Perry grew to hate delivering lines this way.

Perry was also altruistic towards other “Friends” guest stars, like his friend John Stamos. When the audience failed to react after seeing Stamos, he recalled on Instagram that Perry asked them to cheer and applaud, noting, “You guys probably didn’t recognize him at first because he’s so much better looking in person!”