Movies

Matthew Perry Says Jennifer Aniston Confronted Him About Drinking

November 7, 2022

Matthew Perry says ‘Friends’ co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his drinking.
Perry said the moment was “devastating” and he was confused because he had never been drinking on set.
He said Aniston told him, “We can feel it.”

Matthew Perry said it was “devastating” when ‘Friends’ co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his alcohol addiction on the set of the hit sitcom.

In his memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” released Tuesday, Perry detailed his rise to fame and his years of battling alcoholism and drug addiction. The actor notably played the sarcastic Chandler Bing in “Friends”, which ran for 10 seasons between 1994 and 2004.

Perry said he “never got stoned while I was working”, but he revealed that season nine was “the only year I was completely sober for a ‘Friends’ season.” It was also the only season he was nominated for an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy.

“You can follow the trajectory of my addiction if you measure my weight from season to season – when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I’m have a goatee, it is a lot pills,” he said.

Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry in Season Four Episode 13 of “Friends.”

Alice S. Hall/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

Perry said he contracted pancreatitis when he was 30 and spent “30 days and nights” in the hospital receiving fluids intravenously. The actor said he was given “regular amounts of a drug called Dilaudid” for pain relief, and it quickly became his “new favorite drug”.

He said he was “high and happy” and signed the contract for seasons six and seven of “Friends” with “a feeding tube in my arm and Dilaudid running through my brain.”

Perry said that after he left the hospital, he started using Vicodin and drinking again.

“I came back for the next season of ‘Friends’ high as a kite, and everyone knew something had to be done,” he said.

Courteney Cox as Monica, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel and Matthew Perry as Chandler in “Friends.”

Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images

“I was told methadone had no side effects,” he recalls. “That wasn’t true. In fact, it was the beginning of the end. Otherwise, everything else was fine. ‘Friends’ was still going strong.”

Perry said that one day, Aniston (Rachel Green), who he once had a crush on, walked into his trailer and said, “I know you drink.”

“I had long since passed her — since she started dating Brad Pitt, I was fine — and I had figured out exactly how long to watch her without it being awkward, but still, being confronting Jennifer Aniston was devastating,” Perry wrote. “And I was confused.”

The ’17 Again’ star asked Aniston how she could tell he wasn’t sober since he “never worked drunk” and tried to hide his addictions from the cast and crew.

“‘We can feel it,’ she said, in a weird but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a hammer,” Perry said.

Jennifer Aniston as Rachel and Matthew Perry as Chandler in season seven, episode four of “Friends.”

NBCU Photo Bank

In his book, Perry said he “never worked high, but I was definitely hungover” and would need someone to drive him on set.

The actor said that even though people understood his addictions, the show was too successful to be derailed by his unhealthy habits.

“Everyone was asking if I was okay, but nobody wanted to stop the ‘Friends’ train because it was so profitable, and I felt really bad,” he said.