FROM FRIENDS MEMORABILIA TO A BANKSY ORIGINAL, PROCEEDS FROM THE ACTOR’S COLLECTION WILL BENEFIT HIS NAMESAKE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
By Colin Tait | May 19, 2026
We tend to think we know people like Matthew Perry, especially the ones who’ve spent years in our living rooms. For a full decade, he was there, on our television screens — quick with a joke, sharper with a pause, turning sarcasm into something oddly reassuring. Friends became a kind of weekly ritual, and Perry’s Chandler Bing felt like someone we understood. Someone we could count on. Someone who, in his own way, was always there for us.
In time, Chandler — and the group around him — became something like a second family. People we could reliably spend time with, whether in Monica’s apartment or at Central Perk. Familiar voices. Familiar rhythms. A shared language of humor and connection. In Perry’s own unmistakable inflection, the question almost asks itself: Could we know these people any better?
This cast-signed ‘The Last One, Part I’ script is one of the many ‘Friends’ scripts available in Heritage’s June 5 The Matthew Perry Estate Auction.
The yellow frame. The scripts. The photographs.
And yet, The Matthew Perry Estate Auction, coming to Heritage on June 5, suggests there was always more to know.
This is not simply an auction of memorabilia. It’s something closer to a reintroduction, an opportunity to encounter the person behind the performance through the objects he chose to live with, work from, and hold onto. What once felt familiar begins to feel newly understood. Not by changing the story, but by adding to it.
There is, of course, Friends.
The material here captures the show’s cultural reach, as well as its personal meaning to Perry. Reaching back to the beginning, the collection includes the original pilot script — then titled “Friends Like Us”— alongside a studio audience program from an early taping under the show’s working name Six of One. A blue-lined notebook containing six pages of Perry’s handwritten draft for an unaired episode offers a rare glimpse into his creative process. In it, Joey attempts to set up Ross and Chandler — a small, telling window into how Perry shaped humor on the page. Complementing these personal artifacts are signed pilot and finale scripts donated by Warner Bros., each bearing the signatures of the original cast, along with separate documents signed by creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane — a rare, collective imprint of the ensemble and the creative vision that made it all work.
Perry’s collection includes ‘Friends’ memorabilia like this reproduction of the iconic peephole frame that graced the door of Monica’s apartment for all 10 seasons of the series.
A substantial group of Season 10 scripts traces the closing arc of Chandler’s story, particularly the emotional shift that culminates in his and Monica’s decision to adopt twins. It’s a version of the character far removed from the deflection and fear of intimacy that defined his early years.
The story concludes with a candid photo album titled “The One with the Last Supper,” centered on a final dinner held after Friends wrapped. It captures Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and Perry gathered together off set, out of character, and simply enjoying one another’s company. Tucked within is a deeply personal goodbye letter from Aniston, addressed simply to “Matty.”
Perry understood our connection to the characters on Friends better than anyone. “I knew Chandler,” he wrote. “I could shake hands with Chandler. I was him.”
One of the auction’s highlights is a photo album filled with candid shots of the ‘Friends’ cast as they celebrated the series finale. Here, Perry poses with Courteney Cox, while Jennifer Aniston smiles for the camera.
That identification gives these objects a different kind of resonance. They are not just artifacts of a role; they are reflections of a character that, in many ways, ran parallel to the person playing him. Perry also recognized the distance that sometimes remained. Reflecting on the end of the series, he noted, “It was not lost on me that Chandler had grown up way faster than I had.”
Other pieces bring the scale of Friends into focus: studio videotapes preserving his work across the series, framed magazine covers featuring the cast at the height of their cultural influence, and awards honoring ensemble performance — reminders of a show that worked because it functioned, unmistakably, as a unit.
“We were the New York Yankees,” Perry recalled. “From the pilot on … in fact, that pilot was error free. We were slick, professional, top of our game from the very start. We were ready.”
A framed cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine featuring the cast of ‘Friends’ and dated May 18, 1995
When the series finale aired on May 6, 2004, 52.5 million viewers tuned in. Perry wanted the last word — and got it. As the group prepared to leave the apartment for the final time, Chandler delivered one perfectly timed closing line: “Sure … Where?”
It was a small moment, but a perfect one — funny, open-ended, and quietly emotional.
But one of the most revealing aspects of what’s offered in the auction is how clearly the collection extends beyond Friends.
Because Perry did.
Perry’s 1995 Screen Actors Guild Award for ‘Friends’
As a teenager in Ottawa, he had watched fellow Canadian Michael J. Fox achieve what seemed like the ultimate milestone: starring simultaneously in the No. 1 television show, Family Ties, and the No. 1 film, Back to the Future. It was a benchmark that stayed with him. Years later, during Friends’ run, Perry reached that same summit when The Whole Nine Yards opened at No. 1 — a full-circle moment of ambition realized.
From there, he kept moving.
The material here reflects that range — not just the roles audiences saw, but the work behind them. Scripts from his personal archive include drafts of The Whole Ten Yards, alongside screenplays such as Fools Rush In and Serving Sara. There are also unrealized and in-progress projects, evidence of a creative life that was constantly evolving.
What becomes clear is that Perry’s instinct for timing and structure — so central to Chandler — extended well beyond performance. It carried onto the page, shaping dialogue and character. A draft for an unaired episode of Mad About You, marked with handwritten notes, offers a glimpse of that process, while a bound script from his 1997 hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live captures him at the center of live comedy.
Recognition followed. Included here are his Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for Friends, along with nomination certificates spanning his career, including honors for The Ron Clark Story, which earned him Golden Globe and Emmy nominations and affirmed his range as a dramatic actor.
In 2016, Perry discussed his obsession with Batman on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!,’ even explaining that he had a ‘Batcave’ in his home dedicated to memorabilia. A member of Kimmel’s prop department crafted this framed ‘Mattman’ display as a gift to Perry.
He also remained deeply engaged with television as a creator, spearheading a remake of The Odd Couple— returning to the medium that made him a household name, this time shaping it from the inside out. On stage, he continued to reinvent himself. His play The End of Longing, represented here by a framed opening-night photograph from its 2016 West End debut, stands as one of his most personal works — written by him, performed by him, and continually refined in the process.
Perry’s instinct to reflect, to understand, and to reshape finds its clearest expression in one of the most significant pieces in the auction: his personal leatherbound copy of his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Bound in navy leather with gold detailing, it stands apart from the surrounding material. If the scripts document how he worked, this volume captures why.
“I sensed an awakening,” he wrote, “that I was here for more than this big terrible thing … I had a story to tell … and helping others had become the answer for me.”
Taken together, these materials reveal a career that didn’t settle after Friends, but expanded — into writing, into drama, into projects both realized and unrealized. They show a performer who kept working, kept testing, and kept searching for something more. Increasingly, that search pointed beyond performance.
Perry often returned to a question that might have sounded playful: What would Batman do? But like much of what defined him, it carried more weight than it first suggested. Batman — Bruce Wayne — is defined not just by dual identity, but by what he chooses to do with it: turning personal struggle into something that can help others.
Perry found his own version of that answer. Not in fiction, but in practice. Not by fighting crime, but by using what he had — his visibility, his voice, his experience — to help people facing addiction.
Later in his life, Perry began collecting contemporary art like this 2005 ‘Girl with Balloon’ diptych by Banksy.
Matthew Perry meant many things to the world: an actor who made millions laugh, a fierce advocate for those in need, and a loyal friend who understood the value of connection. He spoke openly about his own struggles not to invite sympathy, but to offer hope and to make it easier for others to do the same.
The objects gathered here, which include pieces from his contemporary art collection in addition to the career memorabilia, were part of that life — sources of inspiration, markers of achievement, and reminders of what mattered most. It feels only fitting that they now serve the purpose he came to care about most: helping others find their own path toward recovery.
Through this auction, the Matthew Perry Foundation carries that mission forward — supporting treatment, training physicians, and strengthening recovery efforts in communities across the country. To participate is not only to acquire a piece of Perry’s life; it is to extend it.
At Heritage, honoring the stories behind the objects — and the people who lived with them — is central to the work. With Matthew Perry’s collection, that responsibility carries particular weight.
We may feel like we knew him. This collection offers something closer to the full picture.