Matthew Perry Diane Sawyer Interview: Friends, Addiction, Memoir

Matthew Perry wanted to be more than that friends with one of his female co-stars on the NBC megahit.

In a primetime interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that aired Friday to promote his revealing new memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry admitted he had a crush on costar Jennifer Aniston. (Years ago friends, Perry actually asked Aniston out, but she said no.) “Well, how can you not have a crush on Jenny? And Courtney [Cox]? And Lisa [Kudrow]? So I made it pretty hard for myself to go to work because I had to pretend I didn’t have that crush.” ​​He even wondered if he was staring too hard at Aniston while filming their scenes together: “It’s three seconds too long?”

Perry also described the devastation of a lifelong addiction to drugs and alcohol, telling Sawyer he remembered drinking a whole bottle of wine with his friends when he was 14: “I was lying on the grass and I was just in heaven. And I thought to myself, ‘This is how normal people must feel all the time.’” By the age of 18, he was drinking every day and hoping for his breakthrough friends Role as sarcastic prankster Chandler Bing could serve as a cure for his addiction. But the pressure of having a massive hit only drove him to drink deeper.

Perry told Sawyer he wouldn’t back down while he was out friends set: “I made a rule that I would never drink or eat anything at work… but I would show up blindly hungover. Shaking and crazy hungover.” Aniston confronted him about his drinking and told him they could smell the alcohol on him. After a jet ski accident, he turned to prescription painkillers, eventually taking up to 55 Vicodin pills a day. To get them, he explained, he used “a bunch of doctors, fake migraines, all that stuff,” even going to open houses in properties just to search their medicine cabinets and steal their pills.

At the shoot of 2002 serve Sarah, Perry was so far away from vodka, xanax and methadone that they had to shut down production and later cut him into his dialogue because he slurred his words so much. He drove back and forth to friends Set from a rehab facility, including when Chandler married Monica: “I got driven in a big blue pickup truck to marry Monica from a treatment center.” Recap of old episodes of friends Now, Perry says, he can tell by his appearance what substance he was abusing: “If I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol. If I’m skinny, it’s pills.” He flinched as he looked back friends Scene with Sawyer when he was extra skinny: “I feel sorry for that guy. ‘Cause that’s a guy who’s out of control.”

However, during his struggles, Aniston kept checking him out, Perry reveals, “She was the one who came forward the most…I’m really grateful for that.”