NEW YORK – Matthew Perry is about to make some new TV buddies.
The former co-star of the long-running “Friends” is returning to NBC to star in a still untitled series from “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin about the behind-the-scenes life at a “Saturday Night Live”-type comedy show.
The series will also star Steven Weber (“Wings”) and comedian D.L. Hughley.
NBC, which has aired “Saturday Night Live” since its start 30 years ago, has ordered 13 episodes of the new series from Warner Bros., the trade papers Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter reported Friday.
Sorkin will be joined as executive producer by Thomas Schlamme, a former “West Wing” production partner.
Sorkin left “West Wing” in 2003 after a dispute with NBC.
Perry and “Friends” departed NBC in May 2004.
In the new series, the trade papers reported, he’ll portray a former writer for the show who is hired to fill in when the producer quits.
Perry becomes the third “Friends” star to get his own series. Matt LeBlanc took his character into the spinoff, “Joey,” which has floundered, and Lisa Kudrow starred in HBO’s “The Comeback,” which drew mixed reviews.
Sorkin said he wrote the role in the new series for Perry, who he worked with when the actor filmed an Emmy-nominated guest-starring stint as an assistant White House counsel on “The West Wing” in 2003.
In 2004, Perry starred in the movie “The Whole Ten Yards,” a sequel to “The Whole Nine Yards,” and directed and starred in an episode of the NBC sitcom “Scrubs.”
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