Matthew Perry’s Sad Revelation: He Has No Memory Of 3 Years Of ‘Friends’ Due To Addiction


Matthew Perry is most well-known for his role of Chandler Bing on the iconic show Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004.

But while many fans of the show can to this day tell you exactly what happened in every episode in great detail, Cosmopolitan reports that Perry has revealed in an interview with Chris Evans on BBC News that he can’t remember three years of his work on Friends. The revelation came when Matthew Perry was asked what his favorite episode of the show was.

“I don’t remember three years of it, so none of those. I was a little out of it at the time… Somewhere between seasons three and six.”

The missing years were due to Matthew Perry’s drug and alcohol addiction. Last year, People reported that Perry spoke with the Hollywood Reporter about his addiction and recovery.

“You can’t have a drug problem for 30 years and then expect to have it be solved in 28 days. At Phoenix House, I was very moved by the hope that I saw there, which is what this is all about. Getting sober is a really hard thing to do.”

He also spoke about how hard it was to keep his alcoholism private.

“I’m a pretty private person, but I was on a TV show that 30 million people were watching, so people knew. It was so public what was happening to me. Treatment centers are important because they sort of separate the addict from their environment where they were using. They’re not the finished product though – you have to follow up with a lot of hard work afterwards.”

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In his BBC News interview, Matthew Perry also let slip that he would be interested in doing a Friends reunion.

“I don’t know what the price would be but I think the actors would actually be open to it… I do. I think we would be open to doing something, some kind of TV special. I don’t know about a movie. It’s kind of tough because we’ve ended on such a high note that we don’t want to ruin it, so we’d want to be really careful. Sometimes when you do a reunion it’s terrible, and it sort of ruins the memory of the good show that you’ve done before.”

Of course, Friends has been over for many years, but the cast of Friends — minus Matthew Perry — recently did reunite. The reunion was to pay tribute to director James Burrows, and Matthew Perry was only able to introduce the cast via video from London, where his is doing his new play, The End of Longing. Matthew Perry explained the situation on The Graham Norton Show.

“It’s not true [that we’re all getting together]. It’s not the Friends reunion that everybody’s hoping for. They’re celebrating Jim Burrows, who was a director of Friends and the five of them are going to be on this special and I’m going to introduce them from here because I’m doing the play here so I can’t be there.”

Vanity Fair reports that many fans missed Matthew Perry at the reunion and wished he was there. They also missed Zac Efron from High School Musical, who also missed his cast reunion.

Matthew Perry truly is busy in London with his new play, which previews on February 2 and runs through May 14 at the Playhouse London Theatre. Deadline reports that joining Perry onstage is Lloyd Owen, who will play Perry’s character Jack’s best friend, Joseph. Matthew Perry wrote the play and is the lead in the show.

[Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images]

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