Julia Roberts and Matthew Perry’s tragic love story: Julia Roberts told the producers of Friends that she would only be on the show if she was included in Chandler Bing’s story.
Upon hearing this, Perry sent her “three dozen red roses and the card said, ‘The only thing more exciting than the possibility of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.'” Roberts responded by sending him “lots and lots of donuts.” The two embarked on what Perry calls a “three-month courtship” via daily faxes. “Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly reveal its next letter,” Perry writes. “I was so excited that some nights I would be at a party, flirting with an attractive woman, and I would interrupt the conversation so I could run home to see if a new fax had arrived. Nine times out of ten, one would arrive. By the time they taped the Super Bowl episode, they were already a couple. But two months into their relationship, Perry dumped the actress. “Dating Julia Roberts was too much for me. I was constantly sure she would leave me. Why wouldn’t she? I wasn’t good enough; I could never be good enough; I was broken, bent, imperfect,” he wrote. “So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I left the beautiful, brilliant Julia Roberts. After their breakup, Matthew developed a drug addiction, and although they separated, Julia offered him her help. Matthew Perry died on Julia Roberts’ birthday.
