'Friends' Alum Matthew Perry Landed Guest Star Julia Roberts Thanks to Flirty Fax Machine Messages

This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most famous sitcom episodes in history, the Friends episode "The One After the Superbowl." It still holds the record for the highest-rated show to air after the Super Bowl and was packed with surprise guests. One of them, Julia Roberts, only joined thanks to some flirty faxing from Matthew Perry.

In an oral history of the episode with The Hollywood Reporter, series co-creator Marta Kauffman said it was "pretty exciting" to have Roberts in the show. She played Susie Moss, a childhood friend of Chandler's (Perry) whom he pranked in elementary school. The two go on a date, with Chandler not realizing Susie took the opportunity to plan her revenge. Executive producer Kevin S. Bright said it was Perry who asked Roberts to go on the show.

"Matthew asked her to be on the show. She wrote back to him, 'Write me a paper on quantum physics and I'll do it,'" Bright recalled. "My understanding is that Matthew went away and wrote a paper and faxed it to her the next day." Writer Alexa Junge later added there was flirting between the two, which played out through faxing.

"She was giving him these questionnaires like, 'Why should I go out with you?'" Junge told THR. "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."

Roberts' appearance on the show was kept under wraps. Her name did not appear on the original shooting script, director Michael Lembeck said. The Super Bowl episode also featured Fred Willard, Jim Cummings, Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Fred Willard, and Ross' pet monkey Marcel. It was the first time in several years that a network aired an episode from a show already in its second season as the lead-out to the Super Bowl. The bet paid off, with Friends earning 52.9 million viewers and a 47% audience share, which is still a record.

"I remember when I got a call and they said, 'Oh, we got Julia Roberts' and it was like, 'Are you f— kidding me?" then-NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield told THR. "And we're going to give you Chris Isaak and Marcel?! Marta said in the first season not to get attached to Marcel because it's not easy to work with a monkey. When they put the monkey in the Super Bowl episode, it was this little gift surprise."

This year's post-Super Bowl show will be The Equalizer. CBS will air the pilot for the Queen Latifah-starring reboot after Super Bowl LV between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs. The game will stream for free online this year at CBSSports.com.