Matthew Perry Talks Friends Crushes, Addiction Horrors With Diane Sawyer

Matthew Perry wished to be extra than simply Associates with one among 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 Associates, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor, Perry admitted that he harbored a crush on costar Jennifer Aniston. (Years earlier than Associates, Perry really requested Aniston out, however she mentioned no.) “Nicely, how are you going to not have a crush on Jenny? And Courteney [Cox]? And Lisa [Kudrow]? So I made it form of tough to go to work, as a result of I needed to faux that I didn’t have these crushes.” He even questioned if he was looking at Aniston an excessive amount of whereas capturing their scenes collectively: “Is three seconds too lengthy?”

Perry additionally detailed the ravages {that a} lifetime of drug and alcohol habit have had on him, telling Sawyer he recollects ingesting a complete bottle of wine along with his pals at age 14: “I lay within the grass and simply was in heaven. And I believed to myself, ‘This have to be the way in which that ordinary folks really feel on a regular basis.’” By age 18, he was ingesting on daily basis, and he hoped his breakout Associates function as sarcastic jokester Chandler Bing may function a treatment for his habit. However the pressures of being on a large hit solely drove him deeper into ingesting.

Perry informed Sawyer he didn’t indulge whereas on the Associates 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 ingesting, telling him they might odor the alcohol on him. He turned to prescription painkillers after a jet-ski accident, finally taking as much as 55 Vicodin drugs a day. To get them, he defined, he used “a bunch of medical doctors, pretend migraines, all that stuff,” even going to actual property open homes simply to undergo their drugs cupboards and steal their drugs.

Whereas capturing 2002’s Serving Sara, Perry was to date 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 backwards and forwards to the Associates set from a rehab facility, together with when Chandler married Monica: “I used to be pushed in a giant blue pickup truck to marry Monica from a therapy middle.” Wanting again on previous episodes of Associates now, Perry mentioned he can inform what substance he was abusing on the time based mostly 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 Associates 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 all the time checked in on him, Perry reveals: “She was the one which reached out probably the most… I’m actually grateful for that.”