See how Matthew Perry joined the cast of “Friends”

It’s safe to say that Matthew Perry’s casting in the role that made him a star was divinely inspired.

Perry, who died Saturday at age 54, wrote in his 2022 autobiography that three weeks before his audition for the role of Chandler Bing on the acclaimed sitcom “Friends,” he was in his tiny Los Angeles apartment reading a newspaper article about actor Charlie Sheen.

“It said Sheen was once again in trouble for something, but I remember thinking: Why does he care? He’s famous,” Perry wrote in “Friends, Love, and That Terrible Thing.”

“Out of nowhere, I found myself on my knees, closing my eyes tightly and praying. I had never done this before,” she added.

Perry said his prayer was simple. He simply asked, “God, you can do whatever you want with me. Just please make me famous.”

“Three weeks later, I was cast on ‘Friends.’ And God certainly kept His end of the bargain – but the Almighty, being the Almighty, didn’t forget the first part of that prayer either,” he wrote.

Perry almost didn’t get the chance to play Chandler on “Friends.”

It was 1994 and Perry said he was struggling to get work after his “terrible” manager told him he had “no money.”

“So I called my agent and said, ‘You need to get me any job, any job you can,’” Perry recalled during a 2015 appearance on “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”

“This was the year that ‘Friends’ was filmed, but I was out of business because I had gotten a job on a pilot called ‘LAX 2194,’ which handled baggage handlers at Los Angeles airport in the year 2194,” completed.

Then came the script for a show called “Friends Like Us,” he said.

“It was hilarious and great,” Perry said. “There was a role that was perfect for me and I was going crazy because I couldn’t apply because of the baggage handler gig. I was losing my mind,” she reported.

Fortunately, TV executives who saw “LAX 2194” thought the show was horrible, Perry said, and he was free to pursue the role of Chandler that made him famous.

Perry often said the show changed her life and created a lifelong bond with her costars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer.

The actor got emotional talking about it in May 2021, when he and his co-stars reunited for the HBO Max special “Friends: The Reunion.”

“The best way I can describe it is: after the series ended, at any party or get-together, if one of us met, it was over,” he explained. “It was the end of the night. You just sat with the person all night and that was it.”

Cox got teary-eyed as Perry spoke.

“You apologized to the people you were with, but they had to understand that you met someone special to you and that you would be talking to them for the rest of the night,” he added. “And that’s how it worked.”