Matthew Perry Once Turned Down A ‘Friends’ Storyline Involving A Gay Bar

The hit sitcom Friends recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, having concluded the show on May 6, 2004 after 10 very successful seasons. Although the show is no longer on the air, it is still one of the most beloved American sitcoms of all time and fans can watch reruns whenever they wish on streaming services like Netflix. On the show, actor Matthew Perry played the ever sarcastic Chandler Bing. Bing was known for his sense of humor and ability to find himself in awkward situations. However, there was one storyline the writers pitched that Perry simply didn’t agree to, according to Digital Spy.

One of the ongoing jokes throughout the show was that many people mistook Bing as being gay when he really wasn’t. This was something he was particularly self-conscious about. Writers once pitched a storyline for an episode in which Bing would repeatedly sneak into a local gay bar simply because he loved the chef’s tuna melts there. However, for whatever reason, when Perry heard the storyline he didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. Thus, the idea was thrown out.

“Perry said no, and the story was shelved,” said writer Saul Austerlitz, the author of the book Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era.

This wasn’t the first storyline pitched for the sitcom that wasn’t a huge hit. Perry and his television wife Courteney Cox, who played Monica Geller, filmed one scene that couldn’t be aired when it was expected to. The scene took place at an airport and involved Bing being detained by airport security because he made a joke about bombs on a plane. But then the September 11 terrorist attacks and the crew no longer felt it would be appropriate to air the scene so they redid it using a different storyline.

Friends is now 25 years old (the same age Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry were when it started)! What's your favourite quote? #Friends25 ?? pic.twitter.com/W0Nk9b22Yo

— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) September 22, 2019

Actor James Michael Tyler, who played the coffee shop employee Gunther on the show, recently opened up about whether or not he still speaks to co-star Jennifer Aniston. One of Gunther’s main storylines was that he was madly in love with Rachel Green, played by Aniston. Green, on the other hand, wasn’t remotely interested. Since the show has concluded, Tyler admitted he hasn’t seen Aniston in a long time, as The Inquisitr previously reported.

“She lives in another city. I’m not going to go and hang outside her house and wait for her to come outside and say hello. That would be kind of weird!”