The untimely death of actor Matthew Perry has garnered more interest in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the book he wrote in 2022.
Perry, who was best known for playing Chandler Bing in the American sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S (1994–2004), died on 28 October. He was 54. Tributes for the actor have poured in from all quarters.
Perry’s Chandler Bing character was loved for some of the finest quotes ever delivered on television. His book, which was published on 11 November 2022, was noted for being truthful. It is largely about Perry’s infamous addiction issues and his lifelong struggle with them.
“My mind is trying to kill me and I know it,” he wrote in his memoir, underlining the tumult in his life.
The Guardian’s Barbara Ellen wrote in a review of the book that it “starts to resemble a Tripadvisor for upmarket rehab units.”
Perry also wrote about his romances with high-profile celebrities, his wealth and his understanding of fame.
“You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that,” he wrote.
“It’s harrowing and revealing about the juncture where extreme compound addiction collides with mega-celebrity. It’s a scream of authentic human pain, albeit one sprinkled with stardust. You end up admiring his honesty,” Ellen concluded in the review.
But before that, this snippet shared by actor Mira Sorvino is what is perhaps the most emotional.
I want to leave Matthew Perry’s own words here as the way we remember him. There will never be another like him- he lit up so many hearts in so many ways. Godspeed to Paradise! pic.twitter.com/rUYSeD7tW0
— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) October 29, 2023
The most significant aspects of the book by Matthew Perry
Start of alcohol and painkiller addiction
Matthew Perry faced abandonment issues from an early age since his parents split when he was a baby.
He had his first drink at the age of 14 and was quickly hooked.
“I was lying back in the grass and the mud, looking at the moon, surrounded by fresh puke, and… nothing bothered me. The world made sense; it wasn’t bent and crazy. I was complete, at peace. I had never been happier than in that moment. This is the answer, I thought; this is what I’ve been missing. This must be how normal people feel all the time. I don’t have any problems. It is all gone. I don’t need attention. I am taken care of, I am fine,” he wrote about the experience when he shared sparkling wine with some friends.
Then onwards, he started guzzling in huge volumes alone. He had started living with his alcoholic father at around the age of 15. He wrote in the book that “the best part of my day” was drinking six vodka tonics every night.
He started taking painkillers following an injury. This was when he was filming Fools Rush In (1997). He met with an accident on a jet ski during filming and was administered Vicodin.
“I shook hands with God that morning,” he wrote about his feelings after taking the painkiller, which he did while driving.
He explained: “As the pill kicked in, something clicked in me. And it’s been that click I’ve been chasing the rest of my life.… I couldn’t believe how good I felt; I was in complete and pure euphoria. The pill had replaced the blood in my body with warm honey. I was on top of the world. It was the greatest feeling I’d ever had. Nothing could ever go wrong.”
Then, he got addicted to it so much that he started taking 55 pills a day within the following 18 months. That led to him lying to everyone around him for drugs. He even approached dealers and his weight fell to 58 kg.
Colon bursting incident in 2018
Matthew Perry suffered a near-death experience in 2018. It was when his colon burst due to opioid abuse, and he had to undergo a seven-hour emergency surgery. His memoir, in fact, begins with a graphic description of this incident.
“Opiates cause constipation,” he explained in his book. “It’s kind of poetic. I was so full of s*** it almost killed me.”
On the day of his surgery, doctors told his family that he only had a 2 per cent chance of surviving through the night.
Speaking to PEOPLE for a cover story around the release of his book, Perry said, “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
“There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived. So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason,” he added.
He spent five months hospitalised and was in a coma for two weeks following the surgery, which was successful. But he required a colostomy bag for nine months. The bag often kept bursting and covered him with faeces.
His heart stopped for five minutes
He was set to appear in Don’t Look Up (2021), the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. But his addiction hampered the prospects.
In his book, he revealed that he was taking 1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone during this time.
He got into rehab in Switzerland and was allowed to take prescription painkillers to alleviate excruciating pain.
“In fact, I was OK,” he admitted, adding, “It still felt like I was constantly doing a sit-up – so it was very uncomfortable – but it wasn’t pain.”
The doctors “put some kind of weird medical device in my back” to further help with the pain, which was followed by surgery.
He took the pills and stayed up all night before the surgery. When he anesthetised the following morning, his heart stopped.
“I was given the shot at 11:00 am,” Perry wrote, adding, “I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn’t a heart attack — I didn’t flatline — but nothing had been beating.”
“I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn’t want the guy from ‘Friends’ dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn’t been on ‘Friends,’ would he have stopped at three minutes? Did ‘Friends’ save my life again?” he said, adding, “He may have saved my life, but he also broke eight of my ribs.”
His romances
Matthew Perry’s book is not all about his addiction. In between, he reflected on his past relationships, too.
He began dating Julia Roberts in 1995. It started after F.R.I.E.N.D.S co-creator Marta Kauffman asked him to reach out to the superstar for a guest appearance on the show.
Perry wrote in his book that Roberts agreed on the condition that she “would only do the show if she could be in my storyline.”
“The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers,” Perry wrote in a note to Roberts with three dozen roses.
They had a “three-month-long courtship by daily faxes” before they even met. He recalled sending “hundreds” of faxes back and forth before they ever even spoke on the phone.
“Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive,” he wrote. “It was like she was placed on this planet to make the world smile, and now, in particular, me.”
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts,” he wrote about their eventual break-up.
He also wrote about trying to date Jennifer Aniston as he was “immediately taken by” her when they met three years before they were cast together in F.R.I.E.N.D.S. He had then asked her out, but she turned him down.
“But she said she’d love to be friends with me,” he wrote, adding, “And I compounded the compound by blurting, ‘We can’t be friends!'”
His crush was killed when Aniston didn’t reciprocate his romantic feelings. However, the two remained good friends for the rest of his life.
Perry met Valerie Bertinelli when he was 19. At the time, Bertinelli was 30 and married to Eddie Van Halen.
“I was completely captivated,” Perry wrote. “I mean, I was obsessed with her and harboured elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me.”
He claimed they did have a “long, elaborate make-out session,” but nothing ever came of it.
He also wrote that it was around this time he made out with Gwyneth Paltrow.
The Keanu Reeves controversy
Everyone on this planet loves Keanu Reeves, probably the rarest of rare celebrities who is truly down-to-earth and is universally described in the media as the “nicest guy in Hollywood.”
So, it was not a surprise that Matthew Perry’s offhand remark about the iconic John Wick star received a serious level of backlash.
In the early published versions of the memoir, Perry revealed his admiration for actor River Phoenix — the older brother of Joaquin Phoenix. They had co-starred in the movie A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988).
“River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down,” he wrote, referring to River Phoenix’s untimely death.
But what he wrote after this was viewed as unwarranted.
“Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” wrote Perry.
In a different section of the memoir, Perry again took a jibe at Reeves when writing about his friend Chris Farley’s overdose in 1997.
“I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us,” he wrote.
The backlash was tremendous, and Perry had to announce that all future versions of the book would make no mention of his name.
“I said a stupid thing. It was a mean thing to do,” Perry said at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April 2023, according to The Los Angeles Times. “I pulled his name because I live on the same street. I’ve apologised publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”
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Where to buy Matthew Perry’s book
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, a New York Times No.1 bestseller, can be purchased in stores where available. For those looking to buy it online in Singapore, the book is available on Amazon at USD 23.99 for the hardcover version and USD 18.99 for the paperback version.
An audio CD version of the book is priced between USD 25.99.
(Hero image: Chris Delmas/AFP; Featured image: Amazon)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– What did Matthew Perry say in his memoir?
Matthew Perry opened up about his addiction issues in his memoir. He also talked about his past relationships.
– Did Matthew Perry have a ghostwriter for his memoir?
No, Matthew Perry wrote his memoir himself. “The memoir came together without a ghostwriter, which is rare for household-name authors,” noted The New York Times.
– When did Matthew Perry’s memoir come out?
The memoir was released on 11 November 2022.
– What did Matthew Perry say about Keanu Reeves in his memoir?
Perry made an offhand remark about Keanu Reeves when referring to the deaths of River Phoenix, Heath Ledger and Chris Farley.
– Where to buy Matthew Perry’s memoir?
Matthew Perry’s memoir can be bought from any online portal selling books, such as Amazon, or stores.
This story first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Singapore
