Thank you, Matthew, for your love, for being your true honest self
While Matthew Perry was making us all laugh so hard on stage, he was immensely struggling behind the scenes he once told: “I felt like I was going to die if the live audience didn't laugh, and that's not healthy for sure. But I could sometimes say a line and the audience wouldn't laugh and I would sweat and sometimes go into convulsions.” Moreover, while hoping fame would wash all of his problems away, Perry’s struggles to keep his personal life and health on the line seemed to only keep growing, as he was locked into a never-ending cycle of addiction: “Alcoholism did not care that I was on Friends, it did not care about any of that shit. Alcoholism wants you alone, it wants you sick and then it wants to kill you.”
By Elene De Smedt
Only one year ago, in November 2022, Perry published his memoirs, called Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. It was shortlisted for The British Book Awards 2023 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year. Writing it was all about helping people for Matthew, he said in an interview with Q with Tom Power: “I have heard already five stories of people that read the book and checked into treatment.” Followed by laughing with his own addiction when the interviewer suggested with starting at the beginning: “Yeah, should we just have a drink?” It’s quotes like this that reminds us of Chandler Bing, of someone immensely endearing and funny, but sadly driven by a lot of insecurities.
Matthew’s story is what made Chandler such a lovable, incredible character. “When I read the script, it was as someone had followed me around, stealing my jokes, copying my mannerisms, photocopying my world-weary yet witty view of life. It wasn’t that I thought I could play Chandler, I was Chandler. There were other people reading for Chandler, but I just knew this was my job.” So, when we want to love Chandler and Friends, we have to respect, love and understand Matthew’s person behind it.
Matthew didn’t start off to have a great childhood, actually having a comparable experience as Chandler had; Perry’s parents divorced which resulted in him feeling abandoned by both. His mother had a stressful job, being press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, which made him a “latchkey kid”, as he was spending so much time alone. Matthew learned to be funny because he felt like he had to be: “Me being funny tended to calm her down enough so that she would cook some food, sit down at the dinner table with me and hear me out – after I heard her out of course.”
Matthew with his sister Emily and his mother Suzanne. Photo: Ron Gallela, Getty Images
There is this reoccurring image for Matthew of his mother walking into a big ballroom and taking all the glory “because she was beautiful and everyone knew her”, while little Perry was five feet behind her, all he wanted was for her to turn around and focus on him. “Be with me, you took me, and I want your company. Help me, I’m a kid. And she never really did that and what I realised as an older guy is that I still do that a little bit. And this is all part of addiction; I still want the unavailable, the person who is not turning around. I still want for that person to turn around and notice me.” It kept being a drug for him because all he wanted “was for her to turn around or mention me on the news or whatever… and she didn’t do anything wrong, she was just doing her job, but that’s something that from a young age hurt me.”
Matthew’s father was an actor as well, which meant he saw his father’s face more often on TV or in magazines than he got to see him as the father he was to a son. “My father took me out of my car seat, handed me into my grandfather’s arms, and, with that, he quietly abandoned me and my mother.” From then onwards, he had to split time between his parents who lived in different countries. Being only five years old he was put on a plane from Montreal to Los Angeles. “I was terrified. My feet didn’t even touch the floor. And then when I saw the lights of the city, I knew we were landing, that my dad was going to pick me up, and I’d have a parent again.”
Matthew and his father, John Bennett Perry. Photo: Frazer Harrison, Getty Images
Knowing how carefree a drink can make you feel, knowing what Matthew has been through as a kid, it is not surprising that at 14 years old, drinking a whole bottle of wine, laying on the ground and looking at the sky, he “felt better than I ever had in my entire life.” He thought: life must feel like this for other people all the time. He felt finally at home from the very first time he drank alcohol: “Normal people feel a bit woozy, and go home, I have a drink and for the first time in three weeks life seems to make sense.”
But as a young teenager he didn’t understand this feeling at all, he just felt he had some issue with this thing. “It is a progressive disease, so it gets worse and worse as you get older. You think I’d have a drink the very next night, but I didn’t.” As he got 18, 19, 20, it really started to kick in, to a point he started drinking every night, keeping it a secret. “I would drink with my pals, would race to a liquor store at quarter to two so I could have alcohol at home to drink even more than I had with my friends. And like that it became a rollercoaster ride I didn’t understand.”
However, Matthew didn’t blame his parents anymore for his addiction as he got to believe that addiction is a disease and a natural trait he was destined to suffer from. However, there are disturbing stories of his childhood, but for what, as he clearly says, he doesn’t blame his parents. Matthew had colic as a baby, so he used to cry all the time. After which his parents took him to a doctor, advising them to give Matthew phenobarbital, a major barbiturate, a very addictive thing. “I was 30 days old, and they gave it to me for 30 days. There are pictures of me looking knocked out, with a face all squinched. And they would laugh because stoned babies are fun, I guess.” But Matthew believes it affected his sleep for ever: “I don’t really sleep that well and I’m pretty sure it’s because of that.” But Matthew won’t be harsh on his parents being talked into these things: “If I was a parent and it was 1970 and I was given it by a doctor, for a baby that never stopped crying, I would probably do it too. But now it’s like: are you fucking crazy?”
Photo: Reuters
Writing down all of these confronting, harsh stories for the book, found Matthew actually pretty easy. It felt cleansing to him, like a wonderful experience to write these terrible things down on a page. It was reading it, that was almost impossible: “It was like I disassociated a little bit, I looked at the book and felt: this guy, he has had like the most torturous life, I can’t believe it. And then I realised it was me I was talking about.” Getting to know Matthew’s story, you can only feel love and warmth for him. He must have been such a strong person, having to go through all this, handling all of these traumas while still wanting to make people laugh. And in the end, choosing to actively help people get better from this Big Terrible Thing.
In 2013, Matthew turned his Malibu house into the Perry House, a sober living facility that helped people struggling with addiction to find their way to sobriety. “Helping other people, I can’t really describe it. It’s something spiritual, it fills your heart. You see the light coming on for a new person, who didn’t understand. They didn’t have the guy who said: it’s not your fault. So, I said it to them and I saw this look of relief.” Matthew said he got as much help from talking to 600 people as to one person. “Whenever an 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 kept going and that is the only reason I kept going.” Matthew wrote a play as well, The End of Longing, wanting to get a personal message into the world, an exaggerated form of him as a drunk. “I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.” It is undeniable Matthew meant a lot to all of these people, feeling supported and heard by him.
Jennifer Morrison and Matthew Perry in his play The End of Longing. Photo: Sara Krulwich, The New York Times
Want to know where Chandler got his funny emphasizing bit? He and his best friends, the Murray brothers, suddenly started talking in a kind of interesting way: “Maybe you’re familiar with it,” he jokes in an interview, “could that teacher be any meaner? Could I have more of a detention? And I took that way of speaking and made like a hundred million dollars out of it. And these two very nice guys didn’t do that… but they’re nice about it. You would expect people to be kind of mean about it, but they are just great. I love you guys.” As Matthew is a very funny, self-mocking person, he joked: “The Murray brothers were also there when I first drank, so you know: fuck you.” It indicates how much of a strong man Matthew was, he could put things into perspective and laugh about everything.
“Through the writing of my book, I learned how close I came to death and how often that happened and how I just never want to do it again.” Matthew wanted to be remembered by the things he did to try and help other people. Knowing all of this, there is no other way than thinking of you as an extraordinary person, Matthew. As someone who loved and cared so deeply for other human beings. Thank you, Matthew, for making people laugh till the end of days, for being strong, for helping people in their fight, but most of all: for being your true honest and vulnerably self. We will miss your talent and inspiring existence in our world. We can only hope your soul has found peace.
Photo: Andy Gotts