This Is How Matthew Perry Wanted To Be Remembered After His Death, And It’s Seriously Inspiring

The beloved star was reportedly found unresponsive in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home, with an initial postmortem coming back inconclusive. According to NBC News, a toxicology report has been requested in a bid to determine Matthew’s cause of death. 

Many people have shared artwork with the caption, “The One Where We Lost a Friend,” in touching tribute to the sitcom’s distinct episode title format. Fans have also created a memorial outside the New York City building that is featured as an exterior shot for Chandler’s apartment in Friends.

While the five actors who joined Matthew in making up the core cast for the show have yet to comment on his shocking death, other Friends stars have paid tribute — including Maggie Wheeler, who played his onscreen girlfriend Janice, as well as Friends’ creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane.

In a clip that has been widely shared on social media, Matthew shares his hope that his lasting legacy will be the work that he did throughout his life to support people struggling with addiction and alcoholism.

If you didn’t know, Matthew was incredibly open about his own addiction battle, and told the New York Times just last year that he’d spent an estimated $9 million in his efforts to get sober. 

He also revealed that he started abusing alcohol when he was a teenager before he moved on to prescription medicine and then illegal drugs. 

And this deeply affected Matthew’s 10 years on Friends, which he said he had never rewatched because he found it difficult being able to tell what stage of his addiction he was in season by season. 

“By the end of season three, I was spending most of my time figuring out how to get 55 Vicodin a day — I had to have 55 every day, otherwise I’d get so sick,”  he added, also revealing that he had detoxed 65 times in his life. 

Matthew also recalled his Friends costar Jennifer Aniston once confronting him behind the scenes over his drinking. “Imagine how scary a moment that was,” he told Diane Sawyer at the time. “[Jennifer] was the one that reached out the most. I’m really grateful to her for that.”

But the ultimate turning point for the star came in 2018, when he ended up on life support and spent two weeks in a coma after his colon exploded because of drug use. Matthew needed to have more than a dozen stomach surgeries and used a colostomy bag for nine months. 

He told People magazine that looking down at the scars from his surgeries served as a reminder to stay sober.

Matthew used his celebrity status to raise awareness about addiction in a bid to remove the stigma surrounding the illness. He also spent his time and money setting up resources for those who didn’t have the same means to get help that he did. 

In 2013, Matthew turned his Malibu home into a sober-living facility for men, which he called the Perry House. He also wrote a play called The End of Longing, which he said was a “personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk.”

“I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me,” he added.

And in the newly resurfaced clip that was originally filmed during a live interview on the podcast Q With Tom Power last year, Matthew said that this part of himself is the part he values the most.