Matthew Perry is opening up even more about his past battles with addiction — and the consequences they had on his dating life. In a new excerpt from his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, Perry revealed not only how he asked out Julia Roberts but the reason why he ended things as well.
“Julia had been offered the post-Super Bowl episode in season 2 and she would only do the show if she could be in my story line,” the Friends star, 53, wrote in his memoir, as revealed in an excerpt published by U.K. paper The Times. “Let me say that again — she would only do the show if she could be in my story line. (Was I having a good year or what?) But first, I had to woo her.”
In order to win her over, Perry sent three dozen roses and said how excited he was for her to be on the show. Roberts then challenged him to “adequately explain quantum physics to her,” if he really wanted her on the show (and to date her). “The following day, I sent her a paper all about wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle and entanglement, and only some of it was metaphorical,” Perry wrote.
In a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, actor Matthew Perry shared how ‘grateful’ he is for his longtime relationship with his ‘Friends’ co-star. https://t.co/ZnXC7hc1y7
— SheKnows (@SheKnows) October 23, 2022
Whatever he said, the Chandler Bing charm worked. “Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift: bagels — lots and lots of bagels. … I did let her in, both figuratively and literally, and a relationship began. We would already be a couple by the time we started filming the Friends Super Bowl episode.”
In the episode titled “The One After the Superbowl,” Roberts plays Susie “Underpants” Moss, a former elementary school classmate of Chandler’s who has one thing on her mind: revenge. Back in the day, Chandler had lifted up her skirt during a school play, and after meeting adult Chandler, Susie woos him and proceeds to steal his clothes from him in a very public setting.
Two months after Perry and Roberts were together in real life, Perry’s insecurities, coupled with his addiction, got the best of him, and he called the relationship off. “Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me,” he explained. “Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
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He noted that he felt that Roberts was “slumming it” with him, and that she was wildly confused when he broke things off. “I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face,” he wrote.
This isn’t the first time Perry has been open about his struggle with addiction during his peak fame on Friends. The star revealed that he “probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” in a new interview with The New York Times, and also detailed the excruciating physical toll addiction took on his body, which included a slew of medical calamities in 2018 of pneumonia, an exploded colon, two weeks in a coma, and nine months with a colostomy bag and over a dozen stomach surgeries.
If you or anyone you know is facing substance abuse or addiction issues, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline is available at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information 24/7.
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