Jesse Tyler Ferguson recalled Matthew Perry helped calm his nerves while shooting his first show with a “Friends” anecdote.
While talking with Lisa Kudrow on his “Dinner’s on Me” podcast, Ferguson looked back to days on the set of “The Class” – a one-season show and among the “Modern Family” alum’s first – and remembered a shoot that was saved for him by Perry showing up and sharing a behind-the-scenes joke from his days on “Friends.”
“I remember we were shooting ‘The Class’ on the same stage that you shot ‘Friends’ on at Warner Brothers,” Ferguson said. “David [Krane] was very comfortable there, Jimmy Burrows was very comfortable there. And Matthew Perry was next door shooting the behind-the-scenes drama ‘Studio 60’ and he was dating a cast member of mine on ‘The Class’ but Matthew was the first one of you I met and became friends with.”
He continued, “I think Matthew Perry came to one of our tapings one night. He was in between scenes and there were scenes that weren’t going well. The writers do that thing where if like a joke doesn’t land, they all huddle and come up with a new a new blow for the joke and they come over and spit it out to you and you have to memorize it really quickly and if you start to go off on the wrong words or with the wrong punchline, Jimmy Burrow stops you so you don’t ruin the joke.
“It’s a high stress situation. I think it was a joke for me, actually, and I was having a really hard time nailing it and Matthew came up to me and said, “We would have this joke when were shooting friends. When things didn’t work out, we would always say, ‘Oh, you can hear the traffic on Barnum.’”
“Barham,” Kudrow interjected.
“Oh, Barham,” Ferguson corrected. “Traffic on Barham. That’s right. Because that’s the street that’s outside the studio! But it was a very special time just because I was overlapping with these people who were such titans to me.”
“The Class” was a CBS sitcom that only lasted one season. It followed a group of 28-year-olds reuniting 20 years after being in the same third grade class. It boasted quite a cast of up-comers including Jason Ritter, Lizzy Caplan, Jon Bernthal, Heather Goldenhersh, Andrea Anders, Sean Maguire, and Lucy Punch.
Perry died on Oct. 28, 2023 at his home. Before his death Perry was receiving ketamine infusions, which is sometimes prescribed to treat for anxiety and depression. It ultimately turned into an addiction.
