Zac Efron would play Matthew Perry in a biopic, sure

Zac Efron once played Matthew Perry—sort of—in the teen comedy 17 Again. So perhaps he is uniquely qualified to play the late actor in a biopic about his life. “I’m honored to hear he was thinking of me to play him,” Efron told People on the red carpet of his new film The Iron Claw. “We’ll see. I’d be honored to do it.”

There isn’t necessarily a Matthew Perry biopic in the works at the moment, but the idea of Efron playing the role made headlines because of comments made by Athenna Crosby, an entertainment reporter who was seen dining with Perry shortly before his death. “He said that he wanted to make a movie about his life,” Crosby told Entertainment Tonight. “And he had worked with Zac Efron in the past on a movie, and he said that he wanted Zac Efron to play him as a younger version [of himself] and that he was gonna ask him soon to do that. He was just looking forward to sharing more about his story and his recovery from addiction, and really championing that cause to help more people, so he was so optimistic and happy about everything that he wanted to do.”

According to Perry himself, he’d already asked Efron to be in another film and had been turned down. In a 2022 interview with Jessica Shaw for SiriusXM, Perry said he had a completed romantic comedy screenplay that he was hoping to direct, but needed to find a younger actor for the lead role. “Well, it was Zac Efron. But he said no,” the Friends alum revealed. “So we’ve got to find somebody who says yes. And that’ll be a whole new experience for me, directing a movie, which I think I’ll be good at. I hope I’ll be good at.”

Sadly, Perry never got to direct his film, but perhaps it will still be made—maybe even with Efron as the lead. Regardless, Efron told People he was “devastated” by the loss of his one-time co-star. “He was a mentor to me, and we made a really cool film together,” he said. “I looked up to him, I learned comedic timing from that guy. I mean, when we were filming 17 Again, it was so surreal for me to look across and have him be there, because I’ve learned so much from him, from his whole life.”