Hank Azaria recalls how his longtime friend Matthew Perry helped him get sober: 'We were really more like brothers.'
Jessica is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where she covers TV, movies, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in Bustle, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, and more. She lives in California with her dog."Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles when I moved there. I was 21, he was 16," a somber Azaria shared. "Matthew and I became really good friends and we were really more like brothers for a long time.
"I really loved him," he continued."A lot of us who were close to him felt like we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago because — as he documented in his autobiography — there was so much suffering." Of Perry's unflinching memoirreleased just last year,"I had to pick up and put down that biography, like, 11 times," Azaria said."It was so painful for me to read.
Perry, who shared intimate details about his past struggles with addiction in his memoir, helped Azaria with his own addiction troubles. "I'm a sober guy for 17 years, and I wanna say that, the night I went into AA , Matthew brought me in," Azaria said. "The whole first year I was sober, we went to meetings together. He was so caring and giving. He totally helped me get sober. And I really wish he could've found it in himself to stay with the silver life more consistently.
Azaria also remembered Perry as a comedic genius. "Most nights you spent with Matthew you were crying laughing by the end," he said. "As an actor, he was so brilliant. I just wish we could have gotten what the rest of his career would've been.
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