Speaking to Deadline, the Ocean’s Eleven actor recalled how Perry had always dreamed of landing a role in a sitcom.
“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together,” Clooney, 62, told the publication. “He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid.”
Clooney continued, “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.'”
However, even after Perry landed the role of Chandler Bing on Friends – which ran from 1994 to 2004 – he still didn’t feel fulfilled, remarked Clooney.
“He got on probably one of the best ever,” the ER star noted of the show. “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.”
Clooney famously made a cameo in Friends as Dr. Michael Mitchell in 1995.
Perry, 54, was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in late October.
On 15 December, investigators from the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the actor’s death was an accident caused by the “acute effects of ketamine”.
The report stated that Perry – who had long battled depression and addiction – had been prescribed ketamine for depression and anxiety.
