Could he be any different? The story behind Chandler's manner of speech on 'Friends'
Matthew Perry's dishing out some choice tidbits in his memoir 'Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing' and one of them was how he has the entire world going, "Could I be...?' It's common parlance today, and it all started with Perry's Chandler Bing. In a book that sees him talk about his relationships, his sinewave bond with opioids, and the show, Perry outlined how he gave Chandler a manner of speech that was fondly used to date.
“I read the words in an unexpected fashion, hitting emphases that no one else had hit. I was back in Ottawa with my childhood friends the Murrays; I got laughs where no one else had," he said, per Deadline. “I was talking in a way that no one had talked in sitcoms before, hitting odd emphases, picking a word in a sentence you might not imagine was the beat. I didn’t know it yet, but my way of speaking would filter into the culture across the next few decades. For now, though, I was just trying to find interesting ways into lines that were already funny, but that I thought I could truly make dance. (I was once told that the writers would underline the word not usually emphasized in a sentence just to see what I would do with it.)”
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The pattern and emphasis of his character made their way to the storyline as well with the characters imitating his manner of speech whenever the opportunity presented itself. In one of the episodes, Matt LeBlanc, who plays Joey Tribbiani on the show wears all of Chandler's clothes and says, "Could I be wearing any more clothes?." The second-most popular one is his own, "Some people are gonna be working THIS weekend (emphasis)," which left the audience in splits. It was just Chandler things on the show, but what he did then has stuck with generations that came later.
Matthew Perry’s memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big, Terrible Thing’ releases November 1.