Yvette Nicole Brown couldn't look Odd Couple costar Matthew Perry in the eye out of fear she'd 'cry or fangirl'

Yvette Nicole Brown is sharing how Matthew Perry helped her get over her TV crush on him. 

During a recent episode of the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast, the actress revealed that she was such a huge Friends fan that she actually couldn’t look Perry in the eye while they were filming the first few episodes of their 2015 Odd Couple reboot together. 

“I was a big fan of Matthew’s and I remember when I first met him, I never looked him in the eye because I just thought I would like maybe cry or fangirl a little bit too much,” Brown recalled. “We had got at least two episodes in and I kindly went up and I said, ‘Listen, I'm sorry, I'm a weirdo, but I just really love you. And I think Chandler was really great.’”

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Perry, who died at age 54 in October 2023, took Brown’s confession in stride. “He was like, ‘Yvette, like, what are you doing? Like, this is me, it's fine,’” she said. “And so he kind of helped me get over my little crush, weird fangirl thing.” 

Brown explained that she would use different methods to avoid fangirling too hard in front of Perry when they weren’t filming together — which was almost all of her scenes in the first two episodes of the sitcom.

“I was able to pull it together on camera, but after we would cut, I just kind of scurry away because I just was afraid I'd embarrass myself,” she added. “I really, really was a huge fan.”

Based on Neil Simon’s 1965 play and the original 1970s television series, the Odd Couple reboot aired for three seasons and followed the friendship between Felix (Thomas Lennon) and Oscar (Perry), two college friends who move in together after their divorces. The sitcom rounded out its cast with performances by Brown, Lindsay Sloane, and Wendell Pierce. 

Brown noted that her deep love of Friends was tied to her going through similar experiences after moving to Los Angeles the same year that the NBC series was released.

“When I first moved to L.A. after college, it was the year that Friends debuted. So I spent a lot of time watching that show, dreaming of my life and what I want,” she said. "And we were the same age and they were starting their lives in New York and I was starting my life in California. And so it was a lot of parallels and not having money and hoping somebody likes you back and all of that stuff.”

Brown went on to call Perry “one of the finest comedic actors this world was ever gifted with," adding, "So I'm really grateful that my life crossed paths with him for a short period of time. I'm very grateful that I have that memory, those memories of him. He was a wonderful, loving man.”

Listen to Brown recall working with Perry in the podcast above.