When I think of Friends, I prefer to think of all the good things that make it one of the best sitcoms of all time — Chandler’s hilarious jokes, Phoebe’s most offbeat moments, Joey’s ever-growing food obsession, etc. However, for the sitcom’s six principal actors, the price of such monumental fame could be hard to deal with — particularly for Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc.
We all know about Matthew Perry’s struggles with addiction that ultimately led to his death in 2023 at age 54. He had opened up about his dark times in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which came out almost exactly one year before a ketamine overdose caused him to drown in his hot tub.
The Chandler Bing actor reflected on how bad his addiction was and how it could be tracked by his weight fluctuations throughout Friends’ 10 seasons. He said one time Jennifer Aniston even confronted him about his drinking, and Maggie Wheeler — who played Chandler’s ex-girlfriend Janice — said he talked to her about his struggles. Matthew Perry’s story came to a tragic end, but he wasn’t the only one who went through hard times.
David Schwimmer Had ‘Terrifying’ Fan Encounters That Made Him ‘Want To Hide’
While playing Ross Geller undoubtedly changed David Schwimmer’s life, he told the Making a Scene podcast in 2025 that it took him a long time to adjust to the kind of fame he and his co-stars experienced. Cars tracked his every move, people staked out his house, and that dang Friends theme song haunted him everywhere he went. He recalled a scary fan encounter he had one time, saying:
I was at LAX and I was trying to catch a flight. I’m not one of those actors that has an entourage with me. It’s me, that’s it. I just go solo. I’m going through LAX trying to find my flight, I hear a blood-curdling scream. I was genuinely frightened. I thought someone was being stabbed or something. And a group of girls come and like just accost me… literally just scream and grab me. And they won’t let me go… I mean, it was terrifying.
Back in 2016 he told THR’s Awards Chatter podcast that his fame messed with how he related to other people and how he moved through the world — including how he did his job. David Schwimmer said:
As an actor, the way I was trained, my job was to observe life and to observe other people, so I used to walk around with my head up, really engaged and watching people. The effect of celebrity was the absolute opposite: It made me want to hide under a baseball cap and not be seen. And I realized after a while that I was no longer watching people; I was trying to hide.
He also took the same approach as Jennifer Aniston after the show ended and took roles that were nothing like their Friends characters. David Schwimmer also turned to directing.
Matt LeBlanc Went Into Self-Imposed Exile
For Matt LeBlanc, his troubles went beyond not being able to separate himself from Joey Tribbiani (though that was definitely an issue too). The year that Friends ended, LeBlanc’s daughter was born, but within the first year, she began having seizures and was diagnosed with a form of dysplasia. Then he and his wife Melissa McKnight divorced in 2006.
That was around the time the Friends spinoff Joey was canceled, and Matt LeBlanc told The Mirror in 2016 that he went into hiding and basically told his agent to lose his number. He said:
For years and years, I barely left the house. I was burnt out. I wanted to not have a schedule, not be somewhere. I was in a position to do that. My agent was bummed. Most actors call their agents and say, ‘What’s going on?’. I’d call mine and say, ‘Please lose my number for a few years’. It was a very dark time. I almost had a nervous breakdown.
Because he’s so well-known for his role on Friends, Matt LeBlanc told The Sun that it affects how people talk to him, saying:
Because I played the sort of dimwitted dumb guy, people a lot of the time will talk to me slowly. They don’t expect me to be able to spell my name. That happens more often than you would think.
But do they ever offer him meatball subs? It seems like that might be a perk.
It’s terrible to know that the price of fame was so high for the men on Friends, especially because in Matthew Perry’s case, some of that damage can never be undone.
However, if you prefer to keep your Friends fandom in a more optimistic headspace, just take a deep breath and fire up that HBO Max subscription for another rewatch or two.
