As Friends became a massive sitcom hit for NBC that’s still wildly popular to this day, another show was also climbing the ranks at the network. A little drama called E.R. starring a rising star by the name of George Clooney.
While promoting his new movie, The Boys in the Boat, Clooney reminisced about coming up on NBC alongside Matthew Perry. The veteran actor shared his candid thoughts about Perry’s passing while also praising his undeniable comedic talent.
“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old,” Clooney told Deadline. “We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid. He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was, I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.”
As everyone knows, Perry got his wish and landed the biggest sitcom of all time. Unfortunately, it didn’t bring him the peace he needed, according to Clooney:
“He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him. We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”
As for how Clooney managed the pitfalls of fame, he watched his aunt Rosemary Clooney struggle with drugs and drinking and wanted nothing to do with that. He was also prepared for rough patches after getting some advice from acting greats.
“The people who I loved and got to know, Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, they’d always talk about how your career is not constantly going up,” Clooney said. “There are down moments, and struggles. And then it comes back up and you got to ride it all out.”
The Boys in the Boat is now playing in theaters.
(Via Deadline)
