You're presuming to know a lot about someone else's mindset.
I read that he wanted to be remembered for helping addicts *first and foremost*. Which I can understand, that's important work, especially if you've been there yourself. So I'm not sneezing at that. But I don't recall him saying it as "other than that show," or anything so reductive.
Now I'm not presuming to know his mindset, just generalizing here. But he, along with the other 5, repeatedly renewed his contract on that show. Meaning that no one *made* him stay. 10 years of steady work is a gift when you're an actor. And knowing that you spend a decade bringing laughter and comfort to people is an accomplishment. No, Friends isn't perfect. It was a sitcom with canned laughter and corny moments. And, like many things, some jokes that didn't age well under the scrutiny of today's eye. Personally, I think it's dumb when we try to demand that something from 30 years ago fit today's standards. People change, evolve, grow. That goes for Matthew Perry same as anybody. But that doesn't magically change the show's dialogue. It is what it is, live with it.
As for me, I'll always love Friends. Two years ago, my dad died after an illness. My memory for the first few months after is mostly blank, because grief is weird. But something I remember is that I marathon watched all 10 seasons of Friends, because it was comfortable, and something I could handle. And Matthew Perry was 1/6th of that. Not that I meant anything to Matthew Perry. But if I could work 10 years on a project that would decades later comfort someone in a dark hour, well, worse could be said.
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