The One Where Matthew Perry Says Anything and Everything Under the Sun to Sell His Book

Matthew Perry has continued his media blitz in advance of his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing which first grabbed headlines a week ago when the Friends star revealed that he had a harrowing near-death experience in 2018 when his colon ruptured from opioid abuse. 

Perry’s publicist has been working overtime to keep the sitcom legend in the national conversation even as Kanye West’s ongoing anti-Semitic meltdown dominates the news cycle. The latest revelations from the memoir of the actor-turned-author range from more harrowing stories from a multi-decade struggle with addiction to bizarre, bitter, and wholly mean-spirited takes on beloved superstar Keanu Reeves. We’ve combed through the more outrageous reports from Perry’s tenacious media team so that you don’t have to.

“Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry ponders in a leaked snippet from Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Perry’s first film appearance was in the coming-of-age drama A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, which starred Phoenix as a middle-class teenager living in a wealthy Chicago suburb who writes poetry and struggles to set a path for his life. Perry played Phoenix’s snobby upper-class friend whose girlfriend sleeps with Phoenix. 

“River was a beautiful man inside and out and too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down,” Perry continued about the star who sadly passed away at the age of 23 from a drug overdose in one of the more tragic stories in Hollywood history. Phoenix and Reeves were famously close friends and frequent castmates, starring together in landmark films such as Gus Van Sant’s influential 1991 film My Own Private Idaho.

Saying that Reeves should have died instead of his best friend is boldly reprehensible and shockingly tasteless coming from the comic actor who seeks to elicit sympathy for his own struggles through the release of this memoir. Reeves’ life has been greatly marred by personal tragedy, and invoking the death of Reeves’ best friend as if Perry has some greater claim to that grief while wishing for Reeves’ demise is shameless beyond anything we’ve seen from the Friends star. But, hey, the press tour isn’t over – who knows who else he’ll attack to sell books?

Perry wished death upon Reeves one last time when discussing the death of comedy legend Chris Farley. In his memoir, Perry described the moment he found out about the SNL star’s while in production for Friends, writing, “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out … Keanu Reeves walks among us.” It’s unclear what exactly Reeves ever said or did to Perry to justify such hatred from Perry – Perry’s media team might be saving that story for the launch party.

Another grim excerpt from Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing was released by The Rolling Stone yesterday – the snippet detailed how Perry was forced to pull out of Adam McKay’s apocalyptic political satire Don’t Look Up after an overdose caused his heart to stop while he was undergoing medical treatment in Switzerland.

Perry apparently stayed up all night before a surgery taking hydrocodone, then when the doctors attempted to anesthetize him with propofol, his heart stopped entirely for five entire minutes. Said Perry, "I was given the shot at 11:00 a.m. I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn't a heart attack — I didn't flatline — but nothing had been beating. I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn't want the guy from Friends dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn't been on Friends, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?"

Friends, Lovers, and the Terrible Thing doesn’t release until Friday, so don’t be surprised if we’re just scratching the surface on outrageous revelations from the Friends star and sworn nemesis of Keanu Reeves. We will no doubt hear of more shocking brushes with death, and perhaps more death wishes for whomever Perry decided to arbitrarily hate. 

Maybe if Perry says that Mr. Rogers should have died sooner, his memoir will sell a dozen more copies.