Friends Almost Ruined Chandler & Monica's Love Story - But Matthew Perry Stepped In
NBC's hit show "Friends" was on the air for almost four full seasons before Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) ever hooked up. And according to former "Friends" executive producer Scott Silveri, their London encounter, which was featured in the show's Season 4 finale, was somewhat of a test run to see how viewers reacted. The audience loved Monica and Chandler's chemistry, and the relationship continued — mostly secretly — throughout the next season. For the two-part season finale, however, the writers wrote a cheating episode that would have ruined Chandler and Monica's relationship for good, if Matthew Perry hadn't shut it down.
By the end of Season 5, all of the friends know that Monica and Chandler are together, and decide to take a trip to Vegas to visit Joey, who they believe is working on a film there. The trip happens to coincide with Monica and Chandler's one-year anniversary, but the festivities are halted when Chandler finds out that Monica had lunch with her ex-boyfriend, Richard (Tom Selleck). Actress Lisa Cash told TMZ that she was hired as a guest star for the episode, entitled "The One in Vegas: Part 1," but originally, the plan for the episode was much darker.
"Initially in our script, Chandler goes up to the hotel room, orders room service, and I bring it up [to him] as a hotel worker. We end up talking and laughing and connecting, and Chandler ends up cheating on Monica with my character," Cash explained.
Friends wouldn't have lasted as long without Monica and Chandler's relationship
The script where Chandler cheats on Monica made it all the way to rehearsal before Matthew Perry objected. In her interview with TMZ, actress Lisa Cash says, "The day before we were shooting in front of a live audience, I was told that Perry went to the writers and said the audience would never forgive [Chandler] for cheating on Monica. He was probably right! That would've changed possibly the course of the show and his character."
At this point, "Friends" had already weathered one cheating scandal — who can forget Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel's (Jennifer Aniston) infamous "We were on a break!" storyline? But whereas they were kind of sort of separated (fans still debate this) when Ross slept with someone else, this Chandler-Monica plot point would have constituted cold, hard cheating, and Perry correctly intuited that burning the relationship down in this way wouldn't serve his character or the show.
Cash did lose out on a guest starring role playing opposite Perry — something she says might have been a game changer for her career — but the show managed to make good by giving her a co-starring role as a flight attendant in a scene with Ross and Rachel instead.
Ultimately, Perry's choice to object to the storyline did more than save Monica and Chandler's relationship. Former "Friends" executive producer Scott Silveri, who also co-wrote the fourth season's London finale and the Vegas episodes, told Vulture in 2019 that he thought Monica and Chandler's relationship added three years to the series' overall run. "I don't owe my whole house to them, but at least two bedrooms and a bath are because of them."