This Actor Wrote a Paper on Quantum Physics to Get Julia Roberts on His Show

The "Friends" star was willing to do anything to gets Julia Roberts on his show.

During its run on television, Friends saw a number of guest stars like Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, and George Clooney, but no one made the cast work so hard before agreeing to come on the show than Julia Roberts. According to producers, actor Matthew Perry, who played the sardonic Chandler, asked Roberts to appear on a special hour-long episode after the 1996 Superbowl (boasting the apt episode title, “The One After the Superbowl"). However, rather than a simple "yes" or "no," Roberts made a special request.

“Matthew asked her to be on the show,” executive producer Kevin Bright said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the star-studded episode's 25th anniversary. “She wrote back to him, ‘Write me a paper on quantum physics and I’ll do it.’ My understanding is that Matthew went away and wrote a paper and faxed it to her the next day.”

Julia Roberts and Matthew Perry in "Friends."

Roberts and Perry briefly dated in the mid-'90s. Alexa Junge, a staff writer on the show, opened up about their on-set chemistry. "They may have met before the episode, but she was interested in him from afar because he’s so charming,” Junge said. “There was a lot of flirting over faxing. She was giving him these questionnaires like, ‘Why should I go out with you?’ And everyone in the writers room helped him explain to her why. He could do pretty well without us, but there was no question we were on Team Matthew and trying to make it happen for him.”

The special featured several other celebrity guests, including Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, and Jean Claude van Damme. According to director Michael Lembeck, Shields, unfortunately, did not have such a pleasant experience on the show thanks to her boyfriend at the time.

Brooke Shields and Matthew Leblanc in "Friends."

“Brooke was with Andre Agassi at the time,” Lembeck recalled. “He shows up on shoot night and sits in the audience with the largest hamburger bodyguard. She does the scene where she starts licking Matt’s hand. Then I see him come down, pull Brooke aside and eviscerate her because he’s crazy-jealous. She’s reduced to tears! I broke the show for awhile, and the girls took Brooke aside and loved her, took care of her and got her back on that stage. She did great because of the support of those three. He was a jackass.”