Friends Star Matthew Perry Claims He Dumped Julia Roberts As He Was Afraid She Would Leave Him

Do you guys remember the "Friends" episode in which Chandler Bing hits it off with an old school friend Susie, played by Julia Roberts? Diehard fans would definitely do.

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And it turns out that Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler, also had an off-screen relationship with Roberts.

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The duo appeared together on an episode of the NBC sitcom The One After the Superbowl: Part 2 in January 1996. Perry recently stated that their romance began a year earlier when she was invited to appear in the program.

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Friends producers urged the now-53-year-old to contact the Pretty Woman star after she stated that she would only attend as a special guest if her character, Chandler, could be involved in a storyline with his character.

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Perry revealed in a recent interview: "I sent her three dozen red roses and with a card that 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.'"

"Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift – bagels, lots and lots of bagels," he told The Times.

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According to Perry's upcoming book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the couple began a "three-month courtship" after she consented to perform on the show.

Check out the moment they worked together on Friends:

While Roberts was shooting a film in France, the pair communicated daily through fax. They were already engaged when she returned to film the Friends episode with Perry.

He wrote in the autobiography: “Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive.

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“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.”

However, this arrangement didn’t last long, as the actor dumped Roberts over fears she would leave him.

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“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. 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, unlovable."

“So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts,” he sadly admitted.

The couple split up two months after the show aired. Roberts then married singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett in 1993, but the couple separated in 1995.

Since July 2002, Roberts has been happily married to cinematographer Danny Moder. Hazel and Phinnaeus, now 17, and Henry, 15, are the couple's twins.

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On the other hand, Perry divorced his fiancée Molly Hurwitz in June 2021 after three years together. Details about his current romantic life have not yet been revealed.

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