George Clooney is remembering his decades-long friendship with the late Matthew Perry as he laments on the actor’s untimely death on October 28.
The 62-year-old reminisced on their childhood together during an interview with Deadline about his new film “The Boys in the Boat”. He said that he became friends with a 16-year-old Perry and that they “used to play paddle tennis together”.
Clooney remembered the actor as being “a great, funny, funny, funny kid” whose dream was to be in a sitcom.
“He was a kid and all he would say… was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.’ And he got on probably one of the best ever,” he shared, referring to Perry’s role as Chandler Bing on “Friends”.
However, the actor claimed that Perry “wasn’t happy” during “Friends” and that “it didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace”. While filming his NBC series “ER,” Clooney said he frequently saw Perry since “Friends” was being taped “side by side” on the same NBC soundstage.
“And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him,” Clooney shared.
He added: “We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”
Perry was prescribed Vicodin and Oxycontin as pain medication following a jet ski accident in 1997. Vicodin has a combination of acetaminophen and hydrocodone, with the latter being an opioid pain medication (opioid is sometimes referred to as a narcotic). Oxycontin also belongs to a class of drugs known as opioid analgesics.
The accident led to an addiction to painkillers. Prior to his death, Perry admitted during several interviews that he would take 55 Vicodin pills a day to avoid withdrawal. In 2018, he suffered gastrointestinal perforation because of opioid abuse and was in a coma for two weeks and in the hospital for five months.
Perry also faked prescriptions just to get 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin a day and daily ketamine infusions. Friends claimed he was sober prior to his death. However, his autopsy report released by the County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner, revealed that he died from “acute effects of ketamine”.
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