Remember the episode when the Pretty Woman actress appeared on the famous NBC sitcom FRIENDS? Well, the die-hard fans of the show definitely would.
In January 1996, Roberts made a cameo in episode 13 of Season 2 – The One After The Super Bowl: Part 2.
In the episode, Julia played the role of Chandler Bing’s old school friend, Susie, and the two had a brief on-screen romance in that particular episode.
In a recent interview with The Times, Perry revealed that when the producers asked Roberts to make a guest appearance in the show, she agreed by suggesting that she would only take the guest role if her character were involved with Bing.
“I sent her three dozen red roses, and the card read, ‘The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers,'” he said.
“Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift – bagels, lots and lots of bagels,” he recalled.
The 53-year-old actor wrote in his memoir, ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,’ that his romance with the Notting Hill actress started before their on-screen romance on Friends.
According to Matthew, the duo became involved in a three-month-courtship and shared daily fax messages while she was shooting a film in France.
“Three or four times a day, I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive. I was so excited that some nights I would find myself out at some party sharing a flirtatious exchange with an attractive woman and cut the conversation short, so I could race home and see if a new fax had arrived. Nine times out of ten, one had.” He writes in his autobiography.
He said that although it was amazing to be with Julia, he ended his relationship with her only two months after filming the episode.
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me,” wrote Matthew. “I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, and unlovable.”
“So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
He added, “She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and the TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face.”
“As she made her speech, a voice rose in that room in that rehab, urgent, sad, soft, angry, pleading, filled with longing and tears,” he continued.
“I made a joke. ‘I’ll take you back,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you back.’ The whole room laughed, though this was not a funny line in a sitcom. This was real life now. Those people on the TV were no longer my people. No, the people I was lying in front of, shaking, covered in blankets, were my people now.”
Perry’s autobiography will be launched on November 1, 2022.
What are your thoughts on Matthew’s statements about him dumping Julia? Let us know your views.
Sources: The Times – Daily Mail
