London's West End will be welcoming a Friend from Chicago next week as Matthew Perry makes his debut on the British stage. The handsome actor is appearing in a new production of Sexual Perversity In Chicago, along with homegrown star Minnie Driver.
And Matthew was clearly eager to spend some time in London, as he is paying an incredible £350,000 to rent three adjacent apartments in the upmarket Mayfair area of the city. The actor will be sharing the properties with his co-star Hank Azaria, who is better known as the voice of Moe in The Simpsons.
TV star Matt, 33, is currently in rehearsals and admits he is feeling the pressure. "I am nervous, but the fact that I am means that I belong here," he says. "I'm nervous because I'm going to be away from home for three months, performing in a 900-seat house, eight shows a week.
"I've been doing Friends in front of a live audience for almost ten years and we always say that it's like doing a different one-act play every week. But you know if you screw up, they cut the camera and you start again. You can't go to the West End of London and do a half-assed job and be able to get away with it."
The actor will be paid just £330 per week for his work on the production, in comparison to the £800,000 he gets for each episode of Friends. But it is the love of acting, not money which brought Matthew to London. "I know that if I wasn't paid to act, I would still have to," he says. "I would be in some dinner theatre in Detroit or somewhere doing some play."
Fortunately for British theatre-goers, he will be spending his evenings in the Comedy Theatre in London, not Detroit, as of May 14.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
