Amidst the grim autopsy report following Matthew Perry’s death, we’ve heard a lot about how the late star spent his final days.
It’s not just a matter of the chemicals in his system. Statements from those who knew him say that he was clearly not in a good state.
George Clooney knew the dearly departed Friends star from when Perry was a teenager.
And he is opening up about how Perry was clearly miserable even during the most successful years of his life.
George Clooney spoke to Deadline on Tuesday. He knows that Matthew Perry’s dream was to have a starring role on a sitcom.
Ultimately, that dream came true. Perry became Chandler Bing on Friends.
But Clooney notes that Perry had his addiction to alcohol and to drugs. That made even his success into a burden.
“He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind, and Grant Heslov,” Clooney recalled.
What Perry would say “was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man.'”
According to Clooney, Perry expressed: “‘I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.'”
“And he got on probably one of the best ever,” Clooney stated. Certainly not the most high quality sitcom, but absolutely one of the most famous and iconic.
“He wasn’t happy,” he then acknowledged. “It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace.”
Clooney recalled working side by side with Perry regularly for many years without knowing “what was going through him.”
For many of us, we think of Clooney as someone who was sort of “always” around. Often as a guy our moms thought was hot. But he’s a real person whose career has had ups and downs. Mostly ups.
In the ’90s, Clooney was an ER regular at the same time that Perry starred on Friends. These two shows really embodied a lot of what it meant to live (as an adult) in the ’90s.
“We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day,” Clooney remarked. “And all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff.”
“And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness,” Clooney pointed out.
“You have to be happy with yourself and your life,” he correctly affirmed.
It’s true that money solves a lot of, perhaps even most of, life’s problems in an instant. Other things, it just makes easier. And there are a few things where even a true fortune can only, at best, provide you with protection from the fallout of your struggles.
“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old,” Clooney reminded the world.
“We used to play paddle tennis together,” he specified. “He’s about 10 years younger than me.”
Thinking back, Clooney described: “He was a great, funny, funny, funny kid.”
Perry passed away at 54 in late October. He was deceased in the pool of his Hollywood mansion.
Perry had many substances in his home and in his system. He had been taking ketamine, which doctors believe was recreational (not to be confused with his therapeutic ketamine treatments from a few years ago) and buprenorphine, which assists with opioid addiction.
Unfortunately, he partook of a lethal quantity of both. Our hearts go out to his loved ones. We all wish that he had gotten to lead a happy and full life.
George Clooney Remembers Matthew Perry: Even Friends Stardom Didn’t Bring Him Joy was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.