From excesses to his fleeting romance with Julia Roberts: the harsh revelations of Matthew Perry in his memoirs

At the end of last year, the world was able to learn, through his own writing and his testimony, how the actor Matthew Perry had conceived his destiny. On November 1, 2022, his memoir was released in the United States. Friends, lovers and the big terrible thing , through Flatiron Editions, who shocked the world with the brutality of his revelations and a series of episodes which now take on another meaning after his death last Saturday 28.

Perhaps the liquid center of the memories, as the dialogue with the main New York Times revealed, was that speak openly about his drug addiction . The Williamstown, Mass., native dates the start of his addiction to September 1994, when he was 24 and began filming the series that made him famous, Friends, where he played Chandler Bing. At that time, little by little, alcohol began to be a thorn in my side.

“I could handle it, more or less. But, at 34, I already had a lot of problems,” he admits in the text. As is often the case, the problem revealed itself in the form of an escalation. At first, he was dying for a Budweiser beer and an Andrew Baby Duck wine. Then he moved on to vodka, then came addiction to drugs: painkillers, like Vicodin; anxiolytics and sedatives, like Xanax and OxyContin .And as if that wasn’t enough, he ended up with heroin. There he reached the limit, as he revealed.

“He faked back injuries. I faked migraines . He had eight doctors working at the same time. I would wake up and have to take 55 Vicodin that day and figure out how to do it. When you’re an addict, it’s all math. I go to this place and I have to get three. And then I go to this place, and I’m going to take five because I’m going to be there longer. It’s exhausting, but you have to do it, otherwise you get very, very sick. I wasn’t doing it to feel good or to feel good. He certainly wasn’t a party animal. I just wanted to sit on my couch, take five Vicodin, and watch a movie. It was heaven for me. This is no longer the case”.

The addiction became evident in his physical change, as each season he gained and lost weight, until he decided he had had enough and decided to rehabilitate. “I probably spent 9 million dollars or something like that to try to be sober,” he opined.

It was during his stay in a Los Angeles hospital that Perry began the always therapeutic exercise of writing his life story. Far from the pencil and notebook, the actor used the Notes application on his phone. “It was about writing a book that I hadn’t really thought about before. Every time I came across something I didn’t really want to share, I thought about the people it would help and that kept me going. When he had 110 pages, he showed them to his agent and the agent told him to continue.

A special chapter described by Perry is the relationship he established with the famous actress. Julia Robert. They both met while filming an episode of Friends, in which the star a pretty woman played a Chandler Bing’s former classmate.

Perry says that from the moment he accepted the role, Roberts wanted to be close to him. “Julia was offered the post-Super Bowl episode in season 2 and I was only going to play the role if it was part of my story. I repeat: she would only play the role if she was in my story. (Did he have a good year or something?). But first, I had to woo her.

And he played it. Perry ordered him – in his words – “three dozen roses and a note that said the following. “The only thing more exciting than the prospect of seeing you do the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.

But Roberts wasn’t enough with the flowers. . To let himself be loved, he asked Perry a rather complex condition: “His response was that if I explained quantum physics correctly, I would agree to be on the program. Wow. “First, I was interacting with the woman for whom lipstick was invented, and now I have to review books.”

Far from being intimidated, Perry took up the challenge and began learning all about atomic and subatomic systems. A torrid world, but only the driving force of what he felt for Roberts made it more digestible. So, like a scientist, he wrote an article.

“The next day, I sent him an article on wave-particle duality as well as the uncertainty principle and entanglement.”, and only part of it was metaphorical,” says Perry. It takes time to get there, and in the end there is a reward, says a song. And that’s what happened. Roberts sent her a delicious gift : “Bagels, lots and lots of bagels. » That is, some popular rolls in New York, similar to donuts.

However, the bond between the two did not last long. The weight of his fame was a difficult burden for Perry to bear. “Dating Julia Roberts was too much for me,” he confessed in the book. “I was constantly sure she was going to break up with me. Why not ? I wasn’t enough; It never would be. I was broken, twisted, unlikeable.

“So, instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts. She might have considered going after a TV guy, and the TV guy was breaking up with her. “I couldn’t begin to describe the confused look on his face (at that moment).”

The book also has a Spanish edition by the Spanish publishing house Contraluz under the title Friends, lovers and this terrible thing. It is available to import via Free search .