Tom Selleck was laughing with us when Matthew Perry walked in with the Richard moustache

Jan 30, 2024

Tom Selleck has revealed some of his favourite moments with Matthew Perry while guest starring on Friends.

The 79-year-old, who appeared as a guest star on the sit-com as Monica’s (Courteney Cox) older love interest Richard Burke, recalled being on set while filming the season two episode, The One Where Old Yeller Dies, in which Perry’s character, Chandler, tried to grow a moustache akin Selleck’s signature one.

Reminiscing to USA Today about Perry, who died in October last year, Selleck said he was laughing alongside the studio audience when Perry walked in with what can only be described as an attempted moustache.

“[Perry] walked onto the set, and that brought the house down,” Selleck said.

The actor probably quite enjoyed saying Richard’s subsequent line to Chandler: “Nice moustache, by the way. When puberty hits, that thing’s really going to kick in.”

Selleck said Perry was “the most talented of a very talented group of people”.

He recalled going to him for help with line reading when his character had to mimic Perry’s – delivering the line “Could that shot be any prettier?” with Perry’s signature, sarcastic tone.

“Matthew had this speech pattern that I hadn’t been aware of,” Selleck said.

“Matt told me: ‘It’s a joke, Tom. It’s the way he says it.’ But during that whole show, I kept going up to him asking, ‘Can you say it again?’ and he’d do the line,” Selleck said. “That was his signature.”

Selleck, who was good friends with Perry’s father, actor John Bennett Perry, said the bond between the Friends stars that viewers saw on screen was a genuine one.

“There are no bad stories. No star stuff. Nothing like that there,” Selleck said. “You’d sit down to get notes on rehearsal, and it was fascinating.

“Courteney would be sitting on somebody’s lap and then someone else’s the next time. They all just got along.

“I think it’s because all these actors had failures on other shows. And now they’re in this hit. They all realised how lucky they were.”

Perry was found unresponsive in the swimming pool at this home on 28 October aged 54 and pronounced dead at his LA home. A post-mortem found that his death was an accident from the “acute effects of ketamine”.

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