He called himself a just-add-water addict, hooked on painkillers after a jetski accident. In last year’s shockingly frank memoir, detailing ferocious substance abuse and on-set drinking, did he predict his own death?
atthew Perry was a Friend to all, known the world over as Chandler Bing, always seconds away from a great wisecrack and a show-stopping grin. But he was also an addict. That was the “big, terrible thing” Perry referenced in the title of his memoir last year, giving it equal weighting with the TV series that made him an indelible celebrity, long after he had largely retreated from screens.Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing last year and found it a jarring, often uncomfortable experience.
Perry also had a tricky part to play within the ensemble, in taking a platonic friendship between two cynics into a heartfelt romance. Chandler and Monica was Friend’s central love story, with none of the cushioning contrivances and strategic “breaks” of the series’ other pairings.
Perry might not have risked 17 drinks on set – but he would certainly try for 16. Especially during the later seasons of Friends, he was routinely drunk, high or hungover on set, prompting concern from Jennifer Aniston. Even a “sober companion” to shadow him at work proved insufficient safeguard: when a read-through was cut short by Perry’s incoherence, the entire cast staged an intervention. When The One With Monica and Chandler’s Wedding aired, in May 2001, Perry was living in rehab.
For all its gestures to sobriety, “looking forward” and moving into the future, the final chapter reads like Perry speaking from beyond the grave, reflecting on the faces of his loved ones as if he has already passed on.
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