Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc laughing behind the scenes in Friends
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Guy Howie
Published 15 minutes ago
After joining ScreenRant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.
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These days, Friends is as much a nostalgic tearjeaker as it is a breezy sitcom capable of bringing comic relief to our lives. Perhaps nothing in the series is more heartbreaking in retrospect than the story behind an iconic moment of improvisation by Matthew Perry.
It was Perry’s insistence on having the last laugh that made one of Friends’ defining scenes even more touching than it otherwise would have been. In the wake of Perry’s tragic death two years ago, his impromptu contribution to this scene hits even harder.
While some of the funniest moments in Friends were improvised, this moment right at the end of the show’s finale episode is fraught with a more complex mix of emotions than a joke would usually signify. Two decades later, the moment means even more than when Matthew Perry first came up with it.
Matthew Perry Improvised The Final Line Of Friends
Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Chandler, and Monica in the empty apartment in the series finale of Friends
As one of the biggest and best NBC sitcoms of all time, Friends was under pressure from its legions of fans to bow out the right way, when it came to an end in 2004 after 10 seasons. Overall, its series finale went down pretty well. The episode’s final Chandler joke, in particular, served as a fitting punctuation mark to end the story with.
As Rachel suggests the group of six central characters get some coffee together before going their separate ways, Chandler agrees, before sarcastically asking, “Where?” This line is a clever multi-layered reference to Central Perk, the cafe where the group hangs out together throughout the show, from its pilot right up to this finale episode.
The line makes fun of the fact that they never seem to go for coffee anywhere else in New York, while paying homage to an ever-present setting in the sitcom. But it’s also a wry inside joke from actor Matthew Perry, referencing the destruction of the Central Perk set, which had already happened before the shooting of this final scene.
Perry explains in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, that the line was his own idea. He suggested it to one of the sitcom’s showrunners moments before the shoot for the finale episode began. “Nobody else will care about this except me,” Perry told Marta Kauffman. “So, may I please have the last line?”
Kauffman agreed, even though Chandler didn’t have the last line in the episode script, which she’d cowritten with fellow series creator David Crane. Perry then improvised Chandler’s final word, much to the delight of the studio audience.
The Other Friends Stars Had No Idea Perry’s Line Was Coming
Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe and Matt LeBlanc as Joey in the Friends series finale
10 years after the main characters of Friends met together for the first time in Central Perk, they ended their legendary sitcom run with a joke about their favorite haunt. Yet, because this joke was improvised by Matthew Perry, none of the show’s other central cast members saw it coming.
At the moment it’s delivered in the scene, Courtney Cox, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc all break into heartfelt smiles, because they’re hearing Perry’s joke for the first time. The late actor summed up these spontaneous reactions best when he wrote, “It’s the perfect mixture of affection and amusement, exactly what the show Friends had always given to the world.”
Perry’s Recollection Of The Moment In His Memoir Hits Even Harder Now
Matthew Perry as Chandler hugging Courteney Cox's Monica in the Friends finale
Among the harsh realities of rewatching the Friends series finale, surely the hardest is that the actor who played Chandler Bing is no longer with us. The story behind Chandler’s last line in the sitcom is even more moving in light of Matthew Perry’s tragic passing.
Nothing epitomizes Perry’s genuine love for the show and the character that made him a star better than this simple story. We should be grateful that he got to deliver the last word of Friends, even if it’s a devastating reminder of the fact that Perry himself went far too soon.
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Friends
10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed TV-14 Comedy Romance Release Date 1994 - 2004 Network NBC Showrunner Marta Kauffman Directors Kevin S. Bright, Gary Halvorson, Michael Lembeck, James Burrows, Gail Mancuso, Peter Bonerz, David Schwimmer, Robby Benson, Shelley Jensen, Terry Hughes, Dana De Vally Piazza, Alan Myerson, Pamela Fryman, Steve Zuckerman, Thomas Schlamme, Roger Christiansen, Sheldon Epps, Arlene Sanford, David Steinberg, Joe Regalbuto, Mary Kay Place, Paul Lazarus, Sam Simon, Todd Holland Writers Jeff Astrof, Mike Sikowitz, Brian Boyle, Patty Lin, Bill Lawrence, R. Lee Fleming Jr.Cast
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