Matthew Perry, renowned for his role as Chandler Bing in Friends, battled personal struggles with addiction, identity, and self-worth behind the scenes. During his lowest moments, co-star Jennifer Aniston, a real-life friend, recognized his hidden struggles and refused to give up on him. Now, after three decades of shared love and laughter, Jennifer celebrates the side of Matthew she cherished, emphasizing the way he wished to be remembered.
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00:00 Everyone is still trying to understand this tragedy.
00:03 Friend star Matthew Perry has died.
00:05 I told you he's dead.
00:06 Lee Chandler Bing.
00:07 He died!
00:08 He was part of a family.
00:10 We weren't equipped to deal with it.
00:13 But there's more to Matthew than you think.
00:16 A lot of speculation going on.
00:18 Six thousand AA meetings.
00:20 Crashing cars.
00:21 Took 55 buckets a day.
00:23 Paralyzed his digestive system.
00:26 It's so sad.
00:27 A lot of people did have you in the dead pool.
00:30 When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned.
00:35 Matthew is being remembered for saving countless lives.
00:39 He totally helped me.
00:41 He wanted the best for people.
00:43 Even in the midst of the heaviness that he was carrying.
00:45 And it was Jennifer Aniston who helped him turn his life around.
00:49 What doesn't Matthew know?
00:57 Adios, arriba, derci, au revoir. Take one.
01:00 The camera panned to the back of the apartment door.
01:03 Then Ben, our first AD, shouted for the last time, "That's a wrap!"
01:08 And tears sprang from almost everyone's eyes.
01:11 Aniston was sobbing.
01:13 I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body.
01:16 But I felt nothing.
01:18 I couldn't tell if that was because of the opioid I was taking,
01:21 or if I was just generally dead inside.
01:24 The world fell in love with Matthew on Friends,
01:27 but he got so far from where he first started.
01:30 When Matthew first read the script for Friends,
01:32 he recognized himself in the character of Chandler.
01:34 I used to think it was essential to be funny all the time.
01:38 I was like, "I am this guy. I am Chandler."
01:40 And when Matthew got the part,
01:42 he joined a cast that included the one that got away.
01:45 Well, how can you not have a crush on Jenny?
01:47 Perry asked her out on a date. She said, "No. Let's be friends."
01:51 And then he had to work with her every day.
01:53 Yeah, Jen was super happy to work with her old friend.
01:56 But Matthew's insecurity was getting the best of him.
01:59 What people may not know about Matthew Perry
02:01 is that he's probably one of the most sensitive people,
02:03 as well as being funny and a genius.
02:06 It made it kind of difficult to go to work because I had to pretend.
02:10 She read the book. I always kept wondering,
02:12 "How long can I just look at her?"
02:14 Ever since he was little, Matthew just wanted to be seen.
02:17 Making my mother laugh was a great thing.
02:20 I always have this image of this big ballroom
02:23 and my mother walking in and taking all sort of the glory
02:27 because she was beautiful and people just knew her.
02:30 And I was like five feet behind her,
02:32 and all I wanted was for her to turn around,
02:34 focus on me, and be with me.
02:37 But Matthew's hunger for approval went beyond Jen.
02:40 I felt like I was going to die if they didn't laugh.
02:43 It would freak out. It would take you down.
02:45 You didn't tell us that.
02:46 I felt like that every single night.
02:48 It's clear that Matthew never learned how to deal with his pain,
02:51 and it started when he was just a baby.
02:53 You talk about how even when you were a little baby,
02:56 you still hadn't experienced your pills.
02:58 I was a colicky kid and I used to cry all the time.
03:01 My parents took me to a doctor and he said, "Just give him this."
03:05 And it was phenobarbital,
03:07 which is a major barbiturate and a very addictive thing.
03:11 And I was 30 days old, and they gave it to me for 30 days.
03:15 And when he was 14, Matthew discovered he could numb his insecurity the same way.
03:20 I finally felt at home for the very first time as soon as I drank alcohol.
03:25 I lay in the grass and I thought to myself,
03:28 "This must be the way that normal people feel all the time."
03:32 Matthew had been keeping up the act for years,
03:34 but even while he was starring on Friends,
03:36 his insecurity and addiction spiraled out of his control.
03:40 How did Chandler change as the person playing him starts to struggle with addiction?
03:46 He didn't change. What was changing was me.
03:50 I was taking 55, like, in a day.
03:52 I weighed 128 pounds.
03:54 I was on Friends, getting watched by 30 million people,
03:57 being beaten down so badly by the disease.
04:00 I would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms,
04:04 see what pills they had in there and steal them.
04:07 And I think they thought, "Well, there's no way that Chandler came in and stole from us."
04:11 That's insane.
04:12 Matthew thought he was hiding his pain, but there was one person who saw through it.
04:16 Jenny.
04:17 And she says, "We know you were drinking."
04:20 And I said, "How?" I thought I was hiding it so well, and she said, "We can smell it."
04:24 Imagine how scary a moment that was.
04:26 And there was one moment where everybody started to see what Jen was seeing.
04:31 Matthew Perry's shocking weight loss has fans and Friends worried.
04:34 He struggled.
04:35 We didn't know.
04:37 We weren't equipped to deal with it.
04:40 Nobody had ever dealt with that, the idea of even losing him.
04:46 Matthew couldn't see the love that Jen had for him until one devastating night.
04:51 I was rushed to the hospital because I was in intense pain in my stomach.
04:57 And by the time I got to the hospital, I was writhing on the ground.
05:02 They put me on a stretcher and they ran me into emergency trauma room.
05:08 And my heart stopped for five minutes.
05:11 I was put on an ECMO machine.
05:13 When you talk to any doctor, it is a Hail Mary.
05:17 It is the last thing that you do before people die.
05:21 And there were five people that night that were put on ECMO machine, and I was the only one who survived.
05:28 Matthew had to finally face that seeking validation from others wouldn't make him happy.
05:33 Only he could do it.
05:35 He told the New York Times, "It's no accident that Chandler is a guy who is trying to deter his own human emotional feelings with laughter.
05:42 That's what I did for years, but that could only take me so far."
05:47 It was a combination of feeling like I wasn't enough, feeling like I was needy, feeling like I didn't matter.
05:55 I know what that is now, and I don't suffer from it anymore.
05:58 And yeah, that's what it lights me up to make somebody laugh.
06:02 But I don't have to do that now.
06:05 Instead, Matthew put his energy into helping others, just like Jen helped him.
06:10 The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says, "I can't stop drinking. Can you help me?"
06:17 I can say yes and follow up and do it.
06:20 The night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in. He was so caring and giving and wise.
06:26 It's a disease. It's not a weakness, and it shouldn't be treated as a weakness.
06:32 That is so needed for someone to be able to see you and be able to help you.
06:38 His greatest gift was his heart.
06:40 He actually gave up his house in Malibu and made it into a rehab center.
06:45 In the spirit of Matthew Perry's enduring commitment to helping others struggling with the disease of addiction,
06:52 we embark on a journey to honor his legacy by establishing the Matthew Perry Foundation.
06:58 I was so proud of him for how he turned to trying to help other people.
07:02 The one thing I got right was that I never gave up. Love always wins.
07:07 When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned.
07:11 I want that to be the first thing that's mentioned.
07:13 I'm going to live the rest of my life proving that.
07:16 [applause]
07:19 [music]
07:22 [music fades]
07:25 [silence]
07:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]