Matthew Perry Talks Challenges of Portraying Ted Kennedy

PREMIUM: Matthew Perry talks to World Screen about playing the complex and conflicted Edward “Ted” Kennedy, tasked with carrying on the Kennedy legacy in the aftermath of the assassinations of his two brothers while dealing with his infidelities and alcoholism, in the Muse Entertainment miniseries The Kennedys: After Camelot.

WS: The miniseries starts after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. What was Ted’s mindset at the start of the series?
PERRY: The thing about Teddy is that he always lived in his brothers’ shadows. He wasn’t as smart as the other two, and he had to deal with the fact that he knew that was the case. But people still wanted a Kennedy to run for [president at] the Democratic National Convention. He’s being asked to do this and knows deep down that he’s not ready to be president, so he turns it down. And then Chappaquiddick happened [the car accident in which Ted was driving and a young woman died]. So the miniseries takes you from Ted Kennedy at the age of 38 to the age of 67. What’s interesting is that he’s the one Kennedy you don’t know that much about.

WS: How do we see him evolve?
PERRY: You don’t see Teddy evolve that much because his evolution happened much later in life. Later than what this story tells. He does find a purpose for living in the course of this miniseries, and then follows that, and ended up being one of the greatest senators we’ve ever had for 40 years. But we’re showing mostly his screw-ups, and then he redeems himself in this speech at UCLA where he talks about how he’s responsible for his failures, no one else. He essentially apologizes for his screw-ups. I think he was a great man; he just had some flaws.

WS: What were the challenges of playing a person who existed in real life, compared to playing a fictional character?
PERRY: Well, you get tempted to do just an imitation of the man. What I did was hire a vocal coach for about five weeks. I was doing a play in London, so during my downtime, I would Skype with a vocal coach and learn exactly the way that Teddy spoke, which is the thing that made me the most nervous. I’ve played dramatic scenes before, but I’ve never imitated someone before. I learned a pretty decent Ted Kennedy imitation and worked on it really hard. And then we got to the first day of shooting and I started talking like Ted Kennedy. I found out later that freaked everybody out. They were wondering, Why is he talking that way? How can we get him to stop? And then it all came together. The writer talked to me, the director talked to me and they said what they wanted. They did not want a Ted Kennedy impression. They wanted me and what I could bring to the role, with Ted’s Boston upper-crust accent, which I did. But I had to switch gears on day one because I was imitating Ted Kennedy and they told me they did not want that. Usually, when actors get a movie, they kind of look through the script and go, OK, I won’t have to act on that day, that day’s easy, there’s a hard day. There wasn’t one easy day on this miniseries. It was always hard stuff to do because the Kennedy family was a real tragedy, like a Shakespearean tragedy. Just awful things happen to them over and over again. In this movie I cry a lot, I make a lot of speeches, there’s certainly nothing funny going on. It was delving into his panic during Chappaquiddick, his dealing with the fact that he got away with it, his womanizing, his drinking, the fact that he was so mean to his wife.

WS: Do you flex different acting muscles in drama compared to comedy?
PERRY: Yeah, it’s different. Most of my work through the years has been in comedy. The way that I work a comedy scene is I look at it, see how I can maybe improve it, how I can say things differently than what’s expected of me to say to get a new kind of laugh. Or try to beat the laugh by coming up with a funnier line. On The Odd Couple, which I’m doing now, that’s what the job is. You rehearse the scene but you’re always thinking, Hey, maybe if I said this. You’re pitching jokes along the way all the time and being very creative. In drama, you just have to get very real. And it’s a different form of acting. You play it much more realistically than a sitcom. In a sitcom, if you are playing a guy who is sad, you can’t be sad for too long because you’re trying to make people laugh. In a movie, that guy can be sad, he can cry, he can talk about it, but in a sitcom, he’d only be able to joke about that fact that he was sad.

WS: You mentioned The Odd Couple. How did that come about? The original iterations were important to you?
PERRY: Very important. I was driving in my car and thought to myself, It’s been about 45 years since The Odd Couple [was first] on television. It’s time to remake that. And it’s been a dream of mine to play the role of Oscar Madison since I saw Walter Matthau do it in the movie. I just loved that part. I thought, Why don’t I try to get The Odd Couple remade at CBS, where they just launch shows better than anywhere else, and I’ll play Oscar Madison? And magically it all came true! I wrote the script with Danny Jacobson, and then later rewrote the script with Joe Keenan. So I wrote the pilot and then Bob Daily came in after that to run the show, because if you’re a lead in a sitcom there’s very little time to do much else. So I mostly just act and pitch jokes. I’m not in the writers’ room because I can’t be in two places at once.

WS: What did you want to preserve from the first series or even the film, and how did you want to refresh it for viewers who may not have seen either?
PERRY: Well, the key element to The Odd Couple obviously is the chemistry between Oscar and Felix. That’s what you have to maintain. One is sloppy and one is a neat freak and they’re forced to be together and that ends up being very funny. So that’s the main thing that we tried to preserve. We went out looking for a Felix, and we had like 100 different guys to read Felix, and then Thomas Lennon, who is wonderful, came into the room and didn’t read, he just sort of acted like Felix. I still don’t know if he was being himself or the character, he just talked to us. And we were like, That’s Felix Unger! He got the job the very day that he walked in. We were very fortunate that Thomas and I do have that kind of chemistry; we are funny together and we are funny off of each other. And where the show is at its best, I think, is when the two of us are fighting. And then we make up and people like that, too. The main thing that CBS wanted—and I wanted, too—was to modernize the show; put it in 2016, so it’s not just a total remake of the first one. So we made a couple of changes. Oscar has a ticker tape across 12 flat-screen TVs in his living room, which was a lift from my own life—I actually have a ticker tape in my house! And we put him on a website radio show instead of just being a sports writer. The big difference between this Odd Couple and any of the other incarnations is, this one is much more of an ensemble show. We can go elsewhere and tell other stories that Felix and I may or may not be in.

WS: It seems like the second season really took off.
PERRY: You’re right; the second season is way better than the first one. And we’re hoping the third season will be better than the second one. Everything seemed to gel in the second season. The writers got better, and the actors got better. We got more used to playing the characters, and they got more used to writing the characters. The show is much, much better in its second season than its first. In fact, I’d like to buy all of the first episodes and just burn them!

WS: What are the advantages of performing in front of a live audience?
PERRY: Well, when you perform in front of a live audience you know right away whether something is working or not. Because they’re either laughing or they’re not. When you’re doing a film, you have to wait until the movie comes out and watch it with an audience or go to a screening but you don’t hear whether stuff is working for nine months. A sitcom is just like doing a different one-act play every week. There are 250 people out there and they’re laughing or they’re not laughing. And if they don’t laugh at a joke, we replace it.

WS: As you record the episode you have opportunities to make changes if you want?
PERRY: For sure, writers make changes. I make changes. The best atmosphere for a sitcom is any joke wins no matter where it comes from. So if you find yourself with a tyrannical showrunner who doesn’t let you change anything, that makes things much harder for an actor like me, because I like to be creative and try to make things funnier.

WS: Do you mind if we spend a word or two on Friends?
PERRY: That show about six people living in New York? [Laughs]

WS: You must be aware of the huge impact it had not only on the people who first watched it when it aired on NBC, but the new generation that’s watching it in reruns.
PERRY: Yes, the new generation who comes up to me and asks me for my autograph and then asks why I look so old!

WS: What impact did working on the show have on you professionally and personally?
PERRY: It had a huge impact on my life. It changed my life entirely. I went from just a journeyman actor for hire into the biggest job a person can get. And there are upsides and downsides to that. You lose your anonymity, but you get to do creative work with great people every day, and it’s really fun. You get comfortable playing the role. Obviously, you’re getting paid really well. So there are ups and downs about it.

I wanted to follow up on Friends actors being recognized with a real story that Matt LeBlanc told at dinner. He said somebody came up to him and said, “Hey, are you Joey’s dad?” It didn’t go over very well. [Laughs]

WS: Is that worse than what you’re hearing?
PERRY: I haven’t been asked if I’m Chandler’s dad! [Laughs]