A lot of stories have come out about Matthew Perry in the year since his death at age 54, from making Marlo Thomas feel comfortable on set to saving John Stamos from an embarrassing moment. Now, Brooke Shields, who played one of Friends’ most memorable side characters, has added to the Chandler Bing actor’s lore, and her story is quite a doozy. In fact, even as she spoke of the prank that Perry used to pull on his co-stars, Shields admitted that such a stunt today would likely have gotten him “canceled.”
Brooke Shields famously guest-starred on Season 2’s “The One After the Super Bowl,” playing Erika, Joey’s hand-licking stalker. Coming onto the “well-oiled machine” of Friends — one of the best sitcoms of all time — wasn’t easy though, she said, as the six lead actors were so close and had a bunch of inside jokes. Shields noticed one prank in particular that Matthew Perry used to pull on his co-stars that would definitely not fly on a TV set today. Shields recalled on The View:
They had one inside joke that they did a lot, and Matthew Perry did it, and I thought, ‘If I can make him laugh, it’s just going to feel so good.’ So he would — you couldn’t do it now, you’d get canceled — he would run and throw himself on the floor in front of a girl and pretend to look up her skirt. Again, you’d get canceled today.
Wow, that is definitely not a joke that would go over well on most sets these days, 30 years after Brooke Shields’ time on the show; however, it seemed to be something they were all comfortable with at the time. As Shields indicated above, she saw it as an opportunity to make Matthew Perry laugh, and she decided to reverse the prank on the actor. She continued:
I thought, oh my God, I know what I’m gonna do, so I ran. I ran so fast from one end of the stage all the way to the other, threw myself on the ground and pretended to look up his pant leg. And everybody was quiet, and I thought — I’m on the floor and I’m like — ‘I just suck, and… I look like a crazy person.’ And I’m on the floor for what felt like an hour — it was probably one second — and all of a sudden he started laughing, and they all started laughing.
Thank goodness everybody started laughing, because I can’t imagine the level of embarrassment Brooke Shields would have felt if she’d thrown her body into such a physical prank only for it to fall flat.
She went on to say that Matthew Perry asked her how she’d known about the prank, and she admitted that she’d been watching him and his castmates interact (getting into her stalker character, I see!). She also thanked him for bringing everyone so much humor, so in the end, the joke that, if done today, likely would require an HR meeting ultimately turned into a sweet moment between the actors.
If you want to see how Brooke Shields played off of Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and the rest of the Friends, you can stream “The One After the Super Bowl” or any other episode from the sitcom’s 10 seasons with a Max subscription.
