Matthew Perry needed to be extra than simply Pals with one in every of his feminine costars on the NBC mega-hit.
In a primetime interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that aired Friday to advertise his revealing new memoir Pals, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor, Perry admitted that he harbored a crush on costar Jennifer Aniston. (Years earlier than Pals, Perry truly requested Aniston out, however she stated no.) “Effectively, how are you going to not have a crush on Jenny? And Courteney [Cox]? And Lisa [Kudrow]? So I made it type of troublesome to go to work, as a result of I needed to fake that I didn’t have these crushes.” He even puzzled if he was looking at Aniston an excessive amount of whereas taking pictures their scenes collectively: “Is three seconds too lengthy?”
Perry additionally detailed the ravages {that a} lifetime of drug and alcohol dependancy have had on him, telling Sawyer he recollects consuming a whole bottle of wine together with his buddies at age 14: “I lay within the grass and simply was in heaven. And I assumed to myself, ‘This have to be the way in which that standard folks really feel on a regular basis.’” By age 18, he was consuming day-after-day, and he hoped his breakout Pals function as sarcastic jokester Chandler Bing may function a remedy for his dependancy. However the pressures of being on a large hit solely drove him deeper into consuming.
Perry instructed Sawyer he didn’t indulge whereas on the Pals set: “I made a rule that I might by no means drink or take something at work… however I might present up blindly hungover. Like, shaking and loopy hungover.” Aniston confronted him about his consuming, telling him they might odor the alcohol on him. He turned to prescription painkillers after a jet-ski accident, ultimately taking as much as 55 Vicodin drugs a day. To get them, he defined, he used “a bunch of medical doctors, faux migraines, all that stuff,” even going to actual property open homes simply to undergo their medication cupboards and steal their drugs.
Whereas taking pictures 2002’s Serving Sara, Perry was to this point gone on vodka, Xanax and methadone that they needed to shut down manufacturing and have him dub in his dialogue later as a result of he was slurring his phrases a lot. He was driving forwards and backwards to the Pals set from a rehab facility, together with when Chandler married Monica: “I used to be pushed in an enormous blue pickup truck to marry Monica from a remedy middle.” Trying again on outdated episodes of Pals now, Perry stated he can inform what substance he was abusing on the time primarily based on how he appears: “After I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol. After I’m skinny, it’s drugs.” He cringed whereas watching again one Pals scene with Sawyer the place he was significantly skinny: “I really feel sorry for that man. As a result of that’s a man that’s uncontrolled.”
All through his struggles, although, Aniston at all times checked in on him, Perry reveals: “She was the one which reached out essentially the most… I’m actually grateful for that.”