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In Memoriam: Matthew Perry

(August 19, 1969 – October 28, 2023)

“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life. I’m still working through it personally, but the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic or drug addict comes up to me and says, ‘Will you help me?’ I will always say, ‘Yes, I know how to do that. I will do that for you, even if I can’t always do it for myself! So I do that, whenever I can. In groups, or one on one.

And I created the Perry House in Malibu, a sober-living facility for men. I also wrote my play The End of Longing, which is a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk. I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.

When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends. And I’m glad of that, happy l’ve done some solid work as an actor, as well as given people multiple chances to make fun of my struggles on the world wide web…

but when I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to try to help other people.

I know it won’t happen, but it would be nice.”

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir 

The above quote was from Matthew Perry’s 2022 Memoir in which he reflects on his mortality as an addict, and finally shares with the world what it was like living with the “Big Terrible Thing,” which was Perry‘s way of referring to his drug and alcohol addiction that plagued him in the better part of his life, when his career was on the rise and starting to move away from that show which I shall not name, yet. He suffered with the his addictions for the rest of his life, but it had seemed in 2022 that he had finally come to peace with his demons, and was learning to live with his addictions without letting them define him by relapsing and recycling his time in various rehabilitation clinics. He was clean and sober, but it had not been an easy road the last few years he was honest in admitting that he was more than likely sober for the first time in a long time, because of he used opioids again, or had another drink, it would kill him.

It of course came with shock that on the night of October 28, 2023, when it was announced to the media that Perry had died, it seemed it was that which plagued him in life that eventually killed him. But, It was quite possibly not his addictions, or alcohol use that brought about his untimely death, it was quite possibly a tragic drowning in his hot tub due to a cardiac arrest. On October 28, 2023, Perry was found unresponsive in his hot tub and was pronounced dead at 4:17 pm that day. Perry was 54 years old. The cause of death has yet to be determined pending a toxicology report. His autopsy remains inconclusive until the results of his toxicology have been returned to the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner.

With this In Memoriam I shall respect Perry‘s wishes in death, and list it far behind the other things he did. I will start at the beginning of his life and memorialize the accomplisments and well lived life Perry had and should be remembered for and then will I revisit an apartment in New York City and six friends who frequented it in the 1990s, but it will not be the first thing I write about.

A Beginning Between Two Worlds…

Matthew Langford Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on August 19, 1969. His mother, Suzanne Marie Morrison , née Langford, and born in 1948, is a Canadian journalist who was press secretary to Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. His father, John Bennett Perry, who was born in 1941, is an American actor and former model, or as Perry refers to him in his memoir, “the Old Spice guy.” Bennett Perry was made famous by his appearances in the male grooming brands commercials in the 1970s and 1980s.

When Perry was nine months old, his father abandoned his young family to go to California and chase his dreams of becoming an actor, and so his parents separated, and his mother married Canadian broadcast journalist Keith Morrison. Yes, THAT reporter from Dateline NBC. He was raised by his mother in Canada, he was primarily raised in Ottawa, Ontario, but he also lived briefly in Toronto and Montreal. Perry went on to attend Rockcliffe Park Public School and Ashbury College, a boarding school in Ottawa. He had four younger maternal half-siblings—Caitlin, Emily, Will, and Madeline—as well as a younger paternal half-sister named Mia.

By the time he was 10 years old, Perry started misbehaving. He stole money, smoked, let his grades slip, and beat up fellow student and future Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Perry jokes in the memoir that he decided to end his argument with Trudeau when he was put in charge of an entire army. Perry also in his memoir attributed this childhood rage to feeling like a family outsider who did not belong when his mother began having children with Morrison, writing:

“I was so often on the outside looking in, still that kid up in the clouds on a flight to somewhere else, unaccompanied”.

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir 

 By the time Matthew was 14 years old, he began drinking alcohol and was drinking every day by the time he was 18. Perry practiced tennis, often for 10 hours per day, and became a top-ranked junior player in Canada with the possibility of a tennis career. However, when Perry turned 15, he moved from Ottawa to live with his father in Los Angeles, where competition was tougher.

At 15 years old, Perry studied acting at Buckley School, an expensive college-preparatory school that he says in his memoir was paid for by his father and was located in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, in his memoir Perry describes himself at the time as:

“The pale Canadian kid with a quick mouth, and there’s something about an outsider that piques the curiosity of teenagers — we seem exotic, especially if we have a Canadian accent and can name the entire roster of th eToronto Maple Leafs. Plus, my dad was the Old Spice Guy; for years on there TVs, my schoolmates had seen my dad dressed as a sailor…”

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir 

Perry soon discovered while in L.A. that he would not make a career of playing tennis, he turned towards acting as his father did and tried out for the school play in his sophomore year and was cast as the Lead actor of the play. Perry played George Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. While in high school, he took improvisational comedy classes at L.A. Connection in Sherman Oaks. Perry graduated from the school in 1987.

A STEADY BITE FROM THE ACTING BUG…

Matthew Perry worked steadily in his early career roles as an actor from 1979 to 1993, while some of the roles weren’t as great, or even good, he still managed to be a working actor showing up in various roles from television to film. Perry’s first credited role was a small part in his father’s series 240-Robert in 1979 where he worked as a child actor. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, and while still attending high school, Perry began auditioning for roles. Perry made guest appearances on Not Necessarily the News in 1983, Charles in Charge in 1985, and Silver Spoons in 1986. In 1987 and 1988, he played Chazz Russell in the TV series Second Chance (later called Boys Will Be Boys). Perry made his film debut in 1988 with A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. In 1989, he had a three-episode arc on Growing Pains, portraying Carol Seaver’s boyfriend Sandy, who dies in a drunk driving accident. Perry was cast as a regular on the 1990 CBS sitcom Sydney, playing the younger brother of Valerie Bertinelli‘s character. In 1991, he made a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 as Roger Azarian. Perry played the starring role in the ABC sitcom Home Free, which aired in 1993.

Of his guest spot on Beverly Hills 90210, Perry wrote this in his memoir:

“Getting a guest spot on episode nineteen of the twenty-two-episode first season was a big deal. Beverly Hills 90210 hadn’t yet reached cultural phenomenon status by the time I payed Roger Azarian, Beverly Hills High tennis star and the son of a hard-charging, distant businessman father– but the themes intuit episode (teen depression, suicide, and learning disabilities) marked it out as a show that wouldn’t shy away from real shit, however privileged its milieu.”

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir 

A Friendly Breakthrough…

Perry‘s commitment to a pilot for a sitcom called LAX 2194, set in the baggage handling department of Los Angeles Airport 200 years in the future, initially made him unavailable for a role in another pilot, Friends Like Us, later called Friends. After the LAX 2194 pilot fell through, he had the opportunity to read for a part in Friends Like Us and was cast as Chandler Bing. Perry was the final actor to be cast in the series pilot episode. At the age of 24, Matthew Perry was the youngest member of the main cast. After making the pilot and while waiting for the show to air, Perry spent the summer of 1993 performing at the Williamstown Theater Festival alongside Gwyneth Paltrow.

In his memoir, Perry talks of the brief romantic encounter with Paltrow in the 1990s before Friends aired and became a cultural phenomenon:

“Everyone could smell money, the cast could smell fame. This show was going to work, and it was going to change everyone’s lives forever, then we had to wait a summer before the show first aired. I filled that summer with three notable things — gambling in Vegas at the behest of [Friends director] Jimmy Burrows; a trip to Mexico on my own; and a make-out session in a closet with Gwyneth Paltrow.”

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

Friends was hugely successful, and it made Perry an international celebrity. In May 2000, at the age of 30, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with alcohol-induced pancreatitis. But things were looking up, by 2002, he and his co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer were making $1 million per episode. The program earned him an Emmy nomination in 2002 for the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series award. Perry then appeared in the film Fools Rush In, this would be the film that marked the beginning of his second addiction, he was already an alcoholic by 14, but his opioid addiction would begin during the filming of Fools Rush In in 1997, he became addicted to Vicodin after a jet-ski accident on a lunch break while filming on Lake Mead. Perry completed a 28-day rehab program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation that year.

He described checking into rehab and when he knew he was an addict in his memoir:

“A year and a half later, I was taking fifty-five of those pills a day. I weighed 128 pounds when I checked into Hazelden rehab in Minnesota, my life in ruins. I was in raw fear, certain I was going to die, having no idea what had happened to me. I wasn’t trying to die; I was just trying to feel better.”

– Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

Perry would also star in the films Almost Heroes, Three to Tango, The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards, and Serving Sara. In 1995, he and Jennifer Aniston appeared in a 60-minute-long promotional video for Microsoft’s Windows 95.

For Perry‘s performance as Joe Quincy in The West Wing, Perry received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2003 and 2004. Matthew appeared as attorney Todd Merrick in two episodes of Ally McBeal. In 2004, he made his directorial debut and acted in an episode of the fourth season of the comedy-drama Scrubs, an episode which included his father.

The later Years of a Friend…

Perry starred in the TNT movie The Ron Clark Story, which premiered August 13, 2006, and received a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for his performance. From 2006 to 2007, he appeared in Aaron Sorkin‘s drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Perry played Matt Albie alongside Bradley Whitford‘s Danny Tripp, a writer-director duo brought in to help save a failing sketch show.

In 2009, Perry starred in the film 17 Again playing a 37-year-old man who transforms into his 17-year-old self (Zac Efron) after an accident. The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office success. A review on WRC-TV found Perry miscast in his role, emphasizing the disbelief in Efron growing up to resemble Perry, both physically and behaviorally — a sentiment echoed by other critics.

In 2012, Perry starred in the NBC comedy series Go On, written and produced by former Friends writer/producer Scott Silveri. Perry portrayed Ryan King, a sportscaster who tries to move on after the death of his wife through the help of mandatory therapy sessions. In the same year, he guest-starred on the CBS drama The Good Wife as attorney Mike Kresteva. He reprised his role in the fourth season in 2013.

Perry played the lead role in the world premiere production of his play The End of Longing, which opened on February 11, 2016, at the Playhouse Theatre in London. Its limited run proved successful despite mixed reviews. Perry restructured the play and appeared alongside Jennifer Morrison in its second off-Broadway production, which opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on June 5, 2017. It closed on July 1 after receiving poor reviews. 

Years later Perry described the play as:

“a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk. I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.”

– Matthew Perry

In March 2017, Perry again reprised his role as attorney Mike Kresteva in The Good Fight, a sequel show to the CBS drama The Good Wife. Later that year, he starred as Ted Kennedy in the mini-series The Kennedys: After Camelot.

In May 2021, he participated in the special, Friends: The Reunion. He was meant to have a role in Don’t Look Up, but withdrew in 2020 because of CPR-induced broken ribs. Perry published a memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in October 2022. It became a bestseller on both Amazon and The New York Times charts.

The Big Terrible Thing…

While Perry said in his memoir that although he had made an effort not to drink on the set of Friends, he did arrive with extreme hangovers and sometimes would shake or sweat excessively on set. During the later seasons of the series, he was frequently drunk or high on set. His castmates made efforts to help him, even staging an intervention, but were unsuccessful.

In February 2001, Perry discusses in his memoir how he paused productions of Friends and Serving Sara for two months so that he could enter in-patient rehabilitation for his addictions to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines, and alcohol. He said later that due to his substance use disorder he had no memory of three years of his work on Friends.

In 2018, Perry spent five months in a hospital for a gastrointestinal perforation. During the hospital stay, Perry nearly died after his colon burst from opioid abuse. He spent two weeks in a coma and used a colostomy bag for nine months. Upon being admitted to the hospital, doctors told his family that Perry had a 2% chance of survival. He was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine.

Two years later, while attending rehab in Switzerland, Perry faked pain to get a prescription for 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin per day and was having daily ketamine infusions. He was given propofol in conjunction with a surgery, which stopped his heart for five minutes. The resulting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) resulted in eight broken ribs. He paid $175,000 for a private jet to take him to Los Angeles to get more drugs. When doctors there refused, Perry spent another $175,000 to take a private jet back to Switzerland. In 2022, he estimated that he had spent $9 million on his addiction, including 14 stomach surgeries, 15 stays in rehab, and therapy twice a week for 30 years and had attended approximately 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

A FRIEND THAT GIVES…

In July 2011, Perry lobbied the US Congress as a celebrity spokesperson for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in support of funding for drug courts. He received a Champion of Recovery award in May 2013 from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for opening Perry House, a rehab center in his former mansion in Malibu. In 2015, Perry sold the mansion and relocated its services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he launched an apparel line inspired by Friends, with proceeds donated to the World Health Organization‘s COVID-19 relief fund.

A FRIEND IN DEATH…

On October 30, 2023, Perry‘s Friends co-stars issued a joint statement:

“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just castmates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss. In time we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.”

Perry’s Friends co-stars: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer

On November 3, 2023, Perry’s funeral was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. His five Friends co-stars attended, as did his father, mother and stepfather. 

The Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song “Don’t Give Up“ was played at his funeral. Perry was enamored with the song, and referenced it in signed copies of his autobiography, released in part to help people suffering from depression or addiction issues. When promoting his memoir, he praised the ending of the track’s music video as “so cool” for the hugging featured, and mentioned, “I always put ‘Don’t give up’ there because you shouldn’t give up.”

You can watch the music video for “Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush below:

Following Perry’s death, the National Philanthropic Trust established the “Matthew Perry Foundation” to support people suffering from addictions.

Goodbye, Friend…

Goodbye Matthew, may you find in death the peace you struggled for in life and may your memory be a blessing:

You were there for us
(When the rain started to pour)
You were there for us
(Like you’ve been there before)
You were there for us
(‘Cause you’re there for me too)