Matthew Perry Reveals Why He Never Watched ‘Friends’

Matthew Perry’s tell-all book, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, is still making headlines one month after its early November release.

In a new interview with CBC, the actor revealed something Friends fans have long been curious about — why has the actor never watched his NBC sitcom? Many actors refuse to watch their own work, but the show has been so omnipresent over the last three decades, it would take a concentrated effort to avoid it.

Perry opened up about that reason during the interview, noting it revolves around the addiction issues he was battling during the years they filmed the series. “I was taking 55 Vicodin a day, I weighed 128 lbs, I was on Friends getting watched by 30 million people — and that’s why I can’t watch the show, ’cause I was brutally thin,” he said.

Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow on Friends (© Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

He noted he could tell which substance he was struggling with at the time based on the way he looked in each episode. “I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, ‘drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine,” the actor said about when he did attempt to watch an episode. “I could tell season by season by how I looked. That’s why I don’t wanna watch it because that’s what I see.”

The actor noted that just because he hasn’t, it doesn’t mean he never will. In fact, he wants to watch Friends now that it has become a hit among younger viewers thanks to syndication and streaming.

“I think I’m gonna start to watch it, because it really has been an incredible thing to watch it touch the hearts of different generations,” he noted. “It’s become this important, significant thing. It was really funny and all the people were nice. I’ve been too worried about this, and I wanna watch Friends too.”

Watch the interview below: