Max has added a tribute to Friends star Matthew Perry following his sudden death.
“In Memory of Matthew Perry 1969–2023,” a title card, which appears ahead of each season premiere, reads alongside Perry’s headshot.
Perry brought the role of Chandler Bing to life on Friends from 1994 to 2004. The sitcom focused on a group of friends in their 30s as they navigated life in New York City. Friends’ successful run on NBC skyrocketed Perry, Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) to fame.
Perry later opened up about feeling unprepared for life in the spotlight.
“When [fame] happens, it’s kind of like Disneyland for a while. For me it lasted about eight months, this feeling of ‘I’ve made it, I’m thrilled, there’s no problem in the world.’ And then you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything, it’s certainly not filling any holes in your life,” he told The New York Times in 2002, while discussing his journey to sobriety. “I didn’t get sober because I felt like it. I got sober because I was worried I was going to die the next day.”
While filming Friends, Perry developed an addiction to Vicodin after a Jet Ski accident in 1997. That eventually led to alcohol abuse, which affected Perry’s performance on set and led to him being hospitalized with pancreatitis in 2000.
The actor recalled going through detox in between seasons 6 and 7 of Friends.
“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills,” he wrote in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers & The Big Terrible Thing. “Compare … how I look between the final episode of season six and the first of season seven — the Chandler-Monica proposal episodes. I’m wearing the same clothes in the final episode of six and the first of seven [it’s supposed to be the same night], but I must have lost fifty pounds in the off-season.”
Perry made multiple attempts to get sober and ultimately entered recovery before Max’s Friends reunion in 2021. During the special, Perry opened up about being really hard on himself while filming Chandler’s scenes.
“I felt like I was gonna die if they didn’t laugh. It’s not healthy for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh, and I would sweat and go into convulsions,” he said. “If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get, I would freak out. I felt like that every single night.”
Perry died from an apparent drowning at age 54 on Saturday, October 28. Police responded to a call of someone in cardiac arrest at a Los Angeles home, where they reportedly found Perry unconscious in a hot tub. The authorities are still investigating Perry’s death even though there was no sign of foul play.
Before his sudden passing, Perry discussed how he wanted his legacy to be more than just his time on Friends.
“I would like to be remembered as somebody who lived well, loved well, was a seeker,” Perry said on the “Q With Tom Power” podcast in 2022. “And his paramount thing is that he wants to help people. That’s what I want.”
He added: “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 and do it. When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned. I want that to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m gonna live the rest of my life proving that.”
