Farewell to a Friend

The One Where Our Hearts Broke

Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!

Today’s not a regular posting day for this newsletter, as no doubt you must be thinking—this is a special issue dedicated to someone I couldn’t not write about, though it took me some time to find my way through to the other side.

The artwork is a gorgeous tribute by Shivani Khot, who has managed to say everything there were no words for.

The One Where Our Hearts Broke

You can follow Shivani’s instagram for her beautiful work (shivani.khot)

When Matthew Langford Perry prayed to God three weeks before he was cast in Friends—“do whatever you want to me; just please make me famous”—little did he know how seriously the universe would take both parts of it. He would become a household name for a beloved, wildly successful, era-straddling sitcom and cultural phenomenon. He would also live with the knowledge that his death would shock but not surprise people. 

Matthew’s addiction struggles were no secret after he first went to rehab—in fact, he was singularly courageous and open about his battle, his missteps, and his regrets in that trademark dry, self-deprecating way. But when he was cast as Chandler Bing in the hottest pilot going around that season, the 24 year old was already an alcoholic without recognising it (he had his first drink as a teenager, a beatific moment of stillness and calm he realised, looking back, that he’d always chase). By the summer between seasons 2 and 3, he would have the jet-skiing accident while shooting Fools Rush In which led to a prescription for his first painkiller; by the season 3 finale, he needed 55 Vicodin just so he wouldn’t be violently sick. But nobody knew. And even when they did, I doubt that many knew the full extent of everything he went through that was revealed in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing.

In all honesty, the book could have used at least one more round of firm edits; however, that’s besides the point. It was hard to get through for its emotional rawness more than its repetitive and rambling nature, but it felt important and necessary to bear witness to the Matthew beyond Chandler Bing, even when that person wasn’t always likeable. I couldn’t bring myself to write about it in April, though. His recent untimely passing means that I have to try—for twelve-year-old Anu who gravitated towards the show, for the adult I am now who best navigates everything through words, for Matty.

By all accounts, Matthew was an intelligent, keenly sensitive, talented person with a kind heart and a sharp, comedic wit honed as a childhood defence mechanism. A person who would eventually find purpose in the service of others; ‘fellow sufferers’ to whom he dedicated the memoir. 

But he was also, by his own starkly honest admission in it, a deeply troubled, flawed individual with a self-absorption borne out of the intense insecurity of a lonely child of divorce, and heightened by the gnawing, ravenous darkness of addiction. Add in unhealthy levels of self-loathing, a life-long fear of abandonment inseparably entwined with a desperation to be loved, a strong case of later-diagnosed anhedonia, and ‘a brain and mind out to kill him’, and you have an incendiary mix.

When he first read the pilot script for the Friends audition, he felt as if someone had followed him around for a year, stealing his jokes, copying his mannerisms, and photocopying his ‘world-weary yet witty’ view of life. “It wasn’t that I thought I could play Chandler, I was Chandler.” And let’s face it, Chandler’s a character that could so easily have come off as whiny and weak, even annoying and clingy. Instead, Matthew brought to him an endearing charm, depth, and sincerity. He also brought a vulnerability beneath the wry sarcasm and jokes that makes you want to instinctively protect him, to root for him even when he is being all, well, Bing. The same concern filtered through to the actor and his public confrontation with his addiction. We just wanted him to be okay.

Yet, the man who embodied what would become such a definitive iconic character wished that the show would rank lower down the list of his accomplishments than his legacy of helping fellow addicts get sober. And, make no mistake, it seems that he was there to help so many named and unnamed people, including good friend and Friends guest star Hank Azaria, who posted a heartfelt video after the news broke of his passing.

But here’s the thing, beyond Friends being inevitable and undeniable when talking about any of the cast, beyond the immeasurable comfort it gave and still gives us, and beyond the cast becoming each other’s family and our own, it also, unequivocally, kept Matthew alive. He shared that he’s never watched the show because he can track the progression of his disease by his on-screen appearance, but his interviews and the memoir reveal much how the show was a ‘reason to get out of bed every morning, and a reason to take it just a little bit easier the night before’—“I wanted to be there.” It would remain true for the next decade even as he chased those laughs and felt an extreme self-inflicted pressure to always be funny, because why else would anybody like him?

For much of his life, Matthew Perry wrestled with demons, all the while making millions laugh, and becoming their constant. Loneliness, yearning, and the hope that something out there would fix him—“I was going to be so famous that all the pain I carried with me would melt like frost in sunlight; and any new threats would bounce off me as though this show was a force field I could cloak myself in.” Though he never had a death-wish, as unbelievable as it sounds; he was actually terrified of death. “I wasn’t trying to die [...] all I ever wanted was to feel better.”

If the end of the book is anything to go by, he was finally in a really good place, his ‘grand hopes’ reflecting the desire for a quiet life—a real one that wasn’t run on fear, but devoted to service, learning, and a connection to something bigger than himself (“I’m convinced it’s the only thing that will truly save my life”). With a family of his own, with true love that he wouldn’t push away for a lack of self-worth and a severe anxiety of being “found out” and left behind. Everything underscored by gratitude. Why was he still here when others weren’t?

“I am me. And that should be enough, it always has been enough. I was the one who didn’t get that. And now I do. I’m an actor, I’m a writer. I’m a person. And a good one at that. I want good things for myself, and others, and I can continue to work for these things. There is a reason I’m still here. And figuring out why is the task that has been put in front of me. And it will be revealed. There is no rush, no desperation. Just the fact that I am here, and I care about people, is the answer. Now when I wake up, I wake up curious, wondering what the world has in store for me, and I for it. And that’s enough to go on.”

It feels desperately tragic that he was taken when he had so much to look forward to and offer, that he couldn’t sooner give himself the kindness, the grace, the support he gave so many. I hope that in the year since his memoir, he caught, at least, the merest glimpse of a graspable answer to what he’d been searching for, found some comfort, and some peace. The rest doesn’t bear thinking about, it hurts too much. In the midst of this grief, the announcement of The Matthew Perry Foundation to continue his legacy of helping others offers up a spark of bittersweet succour, as does the fact that he was finally living some semblance of his best life, and could share his story with the world before he left it.

The youngest Friend was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, just across the road from the Warner Bros studios where he spent a decade doing ‘the best job in the world’. He is the first one to leave, and a loss such as his feels doubly personal; we may always have the show, but the one who remains on screen is forever altered. Though there is some aching solace in knowing that every part of him that he left on-screen in Chandler Muriel Bing found happiness and love, stability and chosen family, home and stillness, everything Matthew never stopped simultaneously craving and fearing for all of his earth-bound existence.

With such a beloved character, the actor that brought them to life is adored by extension. But Miss Chanandler Bong wouldn’t be who he is if not for Matthew; we love the character because of him, and I hope that he felt just a fraction of that affection when he was alive. He was loved for himself, he was more than enough even before he started to believe it, at long last.

You can finally rest, Matty.

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As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.

Take care and I’ll see you on November 26th!

Anu

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