Matthew Perry once confessed he’d give up all his fame and money in an instant to cure the substance addiction he’d battled since he was 14.
“The fact that I would trade it all to not have this disease is true,” said the star, who spent more than $15.3 million trying to get clean over the years – including 15 trips to rehab, 6000 visits to AA and even a stint on life support.
In fact, while it’s the comfort food of TV for so many people, heartbreakingly, Matthew admitted he could never bring himself to watch Friends – the sitcom that made him world famous and saw him banking $1.71 million an episode by 2002.
“I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show because I could go, ‘Drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine,'” Matthew said in 2022, adding that his weight gives it away.
“I could tell season by season, by how I looked. That’s why I don’t wanna watch it because that’s what I see.”
“This isn’t just losing a castmate – this is a family member for all the gang,” says an insider.
Viewers, though, couldn’t get enough of bungling Chandler Bing.
“What a loss – the world will miss you Matthew Perry,” wrote his Friends co-star Maggie Wheeler, who played his on-off girlfriend Janice Litman-Goralnik. “The joy you brought to so many in your too short lifetime will live on.”
The Canadian-raised actor – who leaves behind a large extended family – acknowledged the effect he had on pop culture during Friends’ 10-season run from 1994 to 2004.
“Chandler Bing transformed the way that America spoke,” Matthew said of his iconic character, a role he scored when he was just 24. “If you’re going to be typecast, that’s the way to do it.”
But Matthew didn’t want his legacy to just be the laughs he’d created, insisting, “The best thing about me, bar none, is that if somebody comes to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking. Can you help me?’ I can say yes and follow up.”
“I love that guy!” Matt LeBlanc said of Matthew. “I can not see him for five years, then get in a room together and still have that shorthand with each other.”
Indeed, the Emmy and Golden Globe nominee even founded a men’s sober-living facility, Perry House, in his old Malibu Beach home, which operated from 2013 to 2015.
“When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends – and I’m glad of that. I’m happy I’ve done some solid work as an actor… 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.”
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