Matthew Perry has been through some major struggles over the years after Friends and he went public about it in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing where he mentions Keanu Reeves in a very shady way. At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, Perry told the audience that he would remove his fellow actor’s name from all future prints of the book.
Matthew Perry rose to fame in 1994 when he was cast on Friends, but he had been acting since 1979 when he secured a one-episode role in 240-Robert as Arthur. In 2002, he was so popular along with the rest of the Friends cast that they collectively negotiated a $1 million per episode deal that would launch him into mega money, the kind of money that can get an addict into trouble. Trouble is exactly where he found himself years later after struggling with addiction and going in and out of rehab for years.
His memoir was supposed to clear the air and spill the tea. Maybe this is part of the 12-step program, only Perry did it in celebrity fashion by writing a novel.
Keanu Reeves, on the other hand, has nothing to do with any of that and why would his name ever appear in a book about Matthew Perry? The punchline is — as Perry tells it — they live on the same street. In the weirdest name-drop ever, Perry’s memoir says of Keanu, “Why is it that original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”
Whoa, Mr. Perry? What are you saying?
As the LA Times reports, when the Friends star talked about the John Wick actor, he said, “I said a stupid thing. It was a mean thing to do,” and went on to say, “I pulled his name because I live on the same street. I’ve apologized publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”
While there was an era in which Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix were in movies together and a beautiful friendship blossomed from that, the memories were tainted by Perry’s words and he has finally come to grips with that fact. Matthew Perry could become another one of the original thinkers if he puts his mind to it, as long as he actually focuses on work and stops name-dropping just because a guy lives on his street.