52 pages • 1 hour read
Matthew PerryFriends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Like I’ve Been There Before”
Perry meets the cast of Friends Like Us: Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer. All are strangers except Aniston, whom he unsuccessfully tried to date three years earlier. Cox is the best-known actor but emphasizes the show will be an “ensemble” piece, with no one character taking precedence. The cast immediately bonds, and Perry senses how successful the show will be. He feels happy during filming, enjoying the opportunity to contribute funny lines to the script. Consequently, he drinks less at night and loses weight between shooting the pilot and the first series. The show gets a prime slot, and the title is shortened to Friends. Perry realizes that he is still attracted to Aniston, but it is clear his feelings are not reciprocated.
Before the show’s airing, the cast is advised to make the most of their anonymity. They spend a weekend in Vegas together, and Perry travels to Mexico alone. In Los Angeles, Perry attends a party and enjoys “a make-out session in a closet” with actress Gwyneth Paltrow (96). When Friends airs in September 1994, it receives mixed reviews but swiftly gains an audience, soon becoming one of the most popular sitcoms on television. Secretly, Perry worries that his addictions will jeopardize everything.
Shortly after Perry lands the role of Chandler, Craig Bierko moves to New York. The show he chose instead of Friends is not a success, and he does not keep in touch. A couple of years later, Bierko contacts Perry and apologizes. He admits that he could not cope with his friend becoming wealthy and famous from the role he declined. Perry tells Bierko that being famous does not solve anything, but his friend finds this hard to believe.
“Zoom”
After returning to Los Angeles from Switzerland, Perry concentrates on remaining sober. At the same time, he realizes he is unready for the commitment of marriage. He breaks off his engagement, and the relationship ends.
Chapter 5 Summary: “No Fourth Wall”
During the first season of Friends, David Schwimmer becomes the most high-profile cast member after starring in a movie and appearing on The Tonight Show. He suggests to the rest of the cast that they should all ask for the same fee when they renegotiate their contracts. Consequently, by the final season, they are all making over a million dollars per episode.
By the end of 1995, Perry is dating Julia Roberts. Their relationship begins after Roberts agrees to make a guest appearance on Friends if she can be in Chandler’s story line. Perry sends flowers to the famous movie star, and they fax each other daily for three months. By the time Roberts appears on Friends, they are a couple. They spend New Year’s Eve in New Mexico, playing football in the snow and driving to a mountaintop. By April 1996, Perry is single again. Convinced that Roberts will grow tired of him, he breaks up with her to avoid the pain of rejection. Later that year, he has a role in the movie Almost Heroes alongside comic actor Chris Farley. Both actors struggle to function during filming due to their addictions. Chris Farley dies the following year from a drug overdose.
After finishing season two of Friends, Perry shoots the movie Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek. During filming in Las Vegas, Perry takes a jet ski out on Lake Mead despite the film crew’s warning not to do so. Thrown off the jet ski, he injures himself and is prescribed Vicodin for the pain. Eighteen months later, Perry has an addiction to Vicodin and is taking 55 pills each day. As a lesser dose would cause withdrawal, he spends much of his time sourcing the drug by faking illness or finding corrupt medics.
Perry believes his addiction is a secret. However, a former girlfriend realizes he needs help and arranges for him to see a doctor. When filming for season three of Friends ends, Perry checks into the Hazelden treatment center in Minnesota. Several magazines announce the development on their front covers. During a rapid detox, Perry has a grand mal seizure, but a month later he leaves the Hazelden sober. He begins filming season four looking his healthiest. Two months later, he starts drinking again.
In 1999, Perry becomes infatuated with a movie costar, but she falls in love with someone else. The same year, he stars in The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis. The movie is a box-office hit, fulfilling Perry’s lifelong ambition of simultaneously starring in the number one TV show and number one film. However, he has an addiction to pills again and is often hungover on the set of Friends. At one point, Matt LeBlanc discreetly wakes him up as they are filming a scene together.
In between seasons and films, Perry falls ill with severe abdominal pain. He calls his girlfriend, ABC president Jamie Tarses, who takes him to the hospital. When doctors tell Perry he has pancreatitis from excessive alcohol consumption, he rejects the diagnosis and gets Jamie to take him home. However, when his pain intensifies, they drive to a different hospital, where he receives the same diagnosis. Perry is treated in the hospital for a month, and Jamie stays with him at night. Doctors prescribe the opioid Dilaudid, which becomes his “new favorite drug” (128). While in the hospital, he signs a $50 million contract for seasons six and seven of Friends.
Perry’s father invites him to stay with his family for a while so he can attend AA meetings. On the way, the actor swerves to avoid another vehicle and crashes into a house, wrecking the outside stairs and living room. No one is hurt, but the story appears in People magazine. Perry begins drinking and taking Vicodin again, and his father asks him to leave.
When Perry starts filming the new Friends season, he is as “high as a kite” (130). As well as drinking, he is taking methadone in an attempt to quit Vicodin. One day, Jennifer Aniston tells Perry that the cast knows about his drinking problem, as he smells of alcohol. Promising to fix the situation, Perry asks his manager to get him a movie role.
Filming Friends at the same time as the movie Serving Sara, Perry regularly flies from Texas to California. Every day he consumes a quart of vodka in addition to methadone, Xanax, and cocaine. Joining Perry in Texas, Jamie Tarses convinces him he needs treatment. Consequently, production on the movie stops, and filming of his scenes in Friends is postponed. At a rehabilitation center in Marina del Rey, Perry reads “the Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. He realizes he is not alone in his struggle with addiction and acknowledges that he must find a way to stay permanently sober.
Perry enters a rehabilitation center in Malibu, where he lives for three months. One night, he and the other patients watch the Academy Awards. Seeing Julia Roberts receive an Oscar for Erin Brockovich, he jokes, “I’ll take you back” (134). In May 2001, Perry is transported from the treatment center to the Friends set to film Monica and Chandler’s wedding.
“Holes”
Perry compares addiction to the Joker from Batman: an amoral, malevolent force that wants to destroy everything.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
In this section of his memoir, Perry explores The Fantasy and the Reality of Fame. His role in Friends secures him the celebrity status and wealth he has always craved, but it does not resolve his sense of emptiness or his propensity to addiction. As his career peaks, Perry’s addictions spiral further out of control. His jet ski accident is pivotal to his psychological decline as he develops addictions to prescription pills as well as alcohol. Perry compares his descent into drug addiction to “plummeting into the gates of hell” (117).
The author conveys the nature of addiction by describing how drink and drugs take precedence over his work. Sourcing the 55 Vicodin he requires daily becomes “a full-time job” (121) while his acting performances suffer. His pressing need for addiction treatment disrupts the filming of Friends and the movie he is shooting. While aware that he is “surfing down a long slide to oblivion,” he cannot stop (143). The author emphasizes the destructive force of his compulsion in the Interlude “Holes,” comparing addiction to Batman’s nemesis, the Joker: “It just wants to see the whole world burn” (136).
These chapters convey The Nature of Addiction, paying particular attention to the secrecy and shame that often come with it. Perry believes he has succeeded in concealing his addiction, and he feels humiliated when Jennifer Aniston confronts him about his drinking. Shame also prompts him to refute a diagnosis of pancreatitis, only to receive the same verdict at another hospital. From this point in the memoir, the author’s life takes on a recurring pattern of recovery and relapse. He again criticizes addiction treatment centers when he describes his experience at Hazelden. The author points out that, although he recovered at the center, he was not taught the tools to remain sober. He left feeling healthier but knowing he would succumb to alcohol again.
The author uses his short-lived romance with Julia Roberts to exemplify his deep-seated fear of abandonment. Dating the movie star makes him “feel like the king of the world” (111). However, he ends the relationship, unable to tolerate the prospect of Roberts breaking up with him first. The author’s quip while watching Roberts receive an Oscar from an addiction center illustrates his tendency to mask pain behind humor. Brought to an all-time low by his addiction, it seems unthinkable that he once dated and broke up with the star.
Perry offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of making Friends, explaining how elements of the characters were based on the actors’ real-life traits. For example, Chandler’s need to fill silences with a joke echoes Perry’s personality, and his sardonic delivery reflects the comedic style he developed as a child with the Murray brothers. Characters also evolved as the show progressed: Joey, for example, was originally envisioned as “a cool, Pacino-type” (95), but gradually became something more like “a loveable, useless, dumb puppy” (95). Actors were encouraged to contribute their own lines: a significant advantage for Perry, who relished having creative input. The author’s descriptions of his costars suggest their strong on-screen bond was replicated in real life. Even Perry’s unreciprocated sexual attraction to Jennifer Aniston does not get in the way of their friendship. Meanwhile, the author praises David Schwimmer’s “generosity of spirit” in insisting they should all receive the same fee.
Perry makes clear that his time filming Friends was the high point of his career. His evident love of his work on the show and of his fellow cast members only emphasizes the severity of his addiction. Although he fears letting his colleagues down, his addictions continue to escalate. With characteristic self-deprecating humor, Perry suggests that readers can track his substance use by his appearance across the different seasons of Friends: “[W]hen I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills” (121). His revelation of traveling from a residential treatment center to film Monica and Chandler’s wedding starkly contrasts his on-screen persona with the realities of his personal life.
