The final days of Friends star Matthew Perry
The actor was found unresponsive in his jacuzzi after playing two hours of pickleball at Riviera near his home in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of LA.
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The final days of Friends star Matthew Perry
07:21, Oct 30 2023
The actor was best known for playing Chandler Bing in the hit '90s sitcom.
Actor Matthew Perry, who starred as the wise-cracking Chandler Bing on the popular 1990s television sitcom Friends, died on Saturday after apparently drowning in a hot tub. He was 54.
The Los Angeles Times and TMZ, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the actor was found unresponsive in his jacuzzi after playing two hours of pickleball at Riviera near his home in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
After returning from the game, he asked his assistant to run some errands. When the assistant returned two hours later, he found Perry unresponsive in the hot tub and called 911, TMZ reported, citing police authorities.
Some sources said Perry suffered a "cardiac episode" while in the jacuzzi, Nine reported.
There was no sign of foul play.
Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey told CNN a 911 call came in at 4.07pm local time for a water rescue emergency.
Humphrey said it was unclear what body of water it was.
LAPD officer Drake Madison would not name the victim, but confirmed that officers responded to a home matching Perry's address at 4.10pm for a death investigation involving a man in his 50s.
Actor Matthew Perry, who starred as the wise-cracking Chandler Bing on the popular 1990s television sitcom Friends, died on Saturday after apparently drowning in a hot tub. He was 54.
Perry’s last post on Instagram, on October 23 - five days before his death - included a photograph of him sitting in a pool or jacuzzi at night, with the words: “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good? I’m Mattman.”
While Perry had not currently been acting or doing press at the time of his death, he did regularly post content to his Instagram account.
"Mattman" is a name Perry had used in recent days while posting on social media, often including references and imagery related to Batman. It was also a moniker he had linked with mentions of mental health, according to Mamamia.
The day before the hot tub photo, he wrote alongside a video of the moon, "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? - I'm Mattman." And on Tuesday he wrote: "Let's make stigmas a stigma. - I'm Mattman #mentalhealth."
In 2018, Perry was “given a 2% chance of survival” after his colon burst as the result of opioid use, according to People.
“I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs,” Perry, 53, told the magazine. “And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
The health crisis left Perry hospitalised for five months, including two weeks in a coma.
The actor felt he could handle an addiction to alcohol towards the beginning of his tenure on Friends.
“But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” Perry told People.
In 2021 he appeared in the televised Friends reunion special alongside his five co-stars, to reminisce about the show's legacy.
“But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor [at the Emmys]? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.’”
Perry said his struggles worsened as he aged, including using 55 Vicodin pills each day at one point while he was starring on Friends.
“I didn’t know how to stop,” Perry said. “If the police came over to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’re going to take you to jail,’ I’d start packing.”
Perry underwent 15 rehab stints and 14 stomach surgeries throughout his lifetime.
"Jennifer Aniston took me aside once and said 'We know you're drinking,'" Perry said. "And I said, 'How do you know?' And she said 'We can smell it.'"
The interaction didn't stop him from using drugs, but it did mean that Aniston would continue to check on him for the rest of his life – even decades after the show stopped filming.
"She was the one that reached out the most. You know, I'm really grateful to her for that," he said during an interview with Diane Sawyer in October 2022.
In fact, the whole Friends cast "saved" him during his worst lapse in the addiction, he shared.
"[My castmates] were understanding, and they were patient. It could be said that [doing the show] saved me," the actor told People.
In 2021 he appeared in the televised Friends reunion special alongside his five co-stars, to reminisce about the show's legacy.
Perry and actress Julia Roberts hug each other on the set of Friends.
"The best way that I can describe it is after the show was over, at a party or any kind of social gathering, if one of us bumped into each other, that was it. That was the end of the night. You just sat with the person all night long and that was it," he said during the reunion.
"You apologised to the people you were with, but they had to understand you had met somebody special to you and you were going to talk to that person for the rest of the night. And that's the way it worked."
In the last year in particular, Perry devoted his time to sharing his story of addiction and sobriety, with the express hope that his words would help other people going through a similar situation.
"Obviously, because I was on Friends, more people will listen to me. So I've got to take advantage of that, and I've got to help as many people as I can," Perry told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in October of last year.
"When someone calls you for help and says, 'I'm in trouble,' what do you want to say to them first?" Sawyer asked.
"I say, 'Come over. Let's talk,'" Perry said. "And follow up, and help the person, and I see the light come on in their eyes. I have the answer because of stumbling so much. I could help them."
“The kind of message that I guess I give out with this book is don’t give up. There’s help out there. I’ve been helped on a daily basis. If I didn’t get help, I wouldn’t be sitting here. It’s all about finding somebody that knows more than you about this stuff and just listening to them.”
