Nearly a month after the death of Friends star Matthew Perry, tributes continue to roll out from the numerous performers he shared a stage with across a 30-plus-year acting career. Previously, we’ve reported on kind words and fond remembrances from his Friends castmates, as well as many others who credited his kindness and compassion as being important in their lives. Today, his Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip co-star Sarah Paulson has added her own note of condolence and tribute to the list—including revealing the extra effort Perry put in to help her get cast on the Aaron Sorkin behind-the-scenes drama, which ran for a single season on NBC in 2006.
“I was at a particular place in my career where I needed that job very desperately,” Paulson told the cast of The View this week, referencing her role as comedian Harriet Hayes, one of the stars of Studio 60's show-within-a-show. “[Perry], because of his friendship with Amanda Peet, who was my best friend at the time and was also on the show—they had done a movie together called The Whole Nine Yards—so he asked me to meet him in the parking lot for my final audition and I got in his car and he ran the whole scene with me multiple times so I could have a leg up on the other performer. And I did get the job.”
(Sadly, we don’t know who the other performer, who now presumably has their own “Oh, Matthew Perry cost me a job!” story, actually is.)
Paulson credits it all to Perry’s kindness, saying, “I sort of credit him with taking that extra time and he absolutely did not need to do that. He was just the kind of person that if you made him laugh or if you made him smile you felt like you had really arrived. I had the great pleasure of making him laugh a couple times and it made me feel really good. He was a wonderful guy.”