00:00 Everyone is still trying to understand this tragedy.
00:03 Friend star Matthew Perry has died.
00:05 I told you he's dead.
00:06 Lee Chandler Bing.
00:07 He died!
00:08 He was part of a family.
00:10 We weren't equipped to deal with it.
00:13 But there's more to Matthew than you think.
00:16 A lot of speculation going on.
00:18 Six thousand AA meetings.
00:20 Crashing cars.
00:21 Took 55 buckets a day.
00:23 Paralyzed his digestive system.
00:26 It's so sad.
00:27 A lot of people did have you in the dead pool.
00:30 When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned.
00:35 Matthew is being remembered for saving countless lives.
00:39 He totally helped me.
00:41 He wanted the best for people.
00:43 Even in the midst of the heaviness that he was carrying.
00:45 And it was Jennifer Aniston who helped him turn his life around.
00:49 What doesn't Matthew know?
00:57 Adios, arriba, derci, au revoir. Take one.
01:00 The camera panned to the back of the apartment door.
01:03 Then Ben, our first AD, shouted for the last time, "That's a wrap!"
01:08 And tears sprang from almost everyone's eyes.
01:11 Aniston was sobbing.
01:13 I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body.
01:16 But I felt nothing.
01:18 I couldn't tell if that was because of the opioid I was taking,
01:21 or if I was just generally dead inside.
01:24 The world fell in love with Matthew on Friends,
01:27 but he got so far from where he first started.
01:30 When Matthew first read the script for Friends,
01:32 he recognized himself in the character of Chandler.
01:34 I used to think it was essential to be funny all the time.
01:38 I was like, "I am this guy. I am Chandler."
01:40 And when Matthew got the part,
01:42 he joined a cast that included the one that got away.
01:45 Well, how can you not have a crush on Jenny?
01:47 Perry asked her out on a date. She said, "No. Let's be friends."
01:51 And then he had to work with her every day.
01:53 Yeah, Jen was super happy to work with her old friend.
01:56 But Matthew's insecurity was getting the best of him.
01:59 What people may not know about Matthew Perry
02:01 is that he's probably one of the most sensitive people,
02:03 as well as being funny and a genius.
02:06 It made it kind of difficult to go to work because I had to pretend.
02:10 She read the book. I always kept wondering,
02:12 "How long can I just look at her?"
02:14 Ever since he was little, Matthew just wanted to be seen.
02:17 Making my mother laugh was a great thing.
02:20 I always have this image of this big ballroom
02:23 and my mother walking in and taking all sort of the glory
02:27 because she was beautiful and people just knew her.
02:30 And I was like five feet behind her,
02:32 and all I wanted was for her to turn around,
02:34 focus on me, and be with me.
02:37 But Matthew's hunger for approval went beyond Jen.
02:40 I felt like I was going to die if they didn't laugh.
02:43 It would freak out. It would take you down.
02:45 You didn't tell us that.
02:46 I felt like that every single night.
02:48 It's clear that Matthew never learned how to deal with his pain,
02:51 and it started when he was just a baby.
02:53 You talk about how even when you were a little baby,
02:56 you still hadn't experienced your pills.
02:58 I was a colicky kid and I used to cry all the time.
03:01 My parents took me to a doctor and he said, "Just give him this."
03:05 And it was phenobarbital,
03:07 which is a major barbiturate and a very addictive thing.
03:11 And I was 30 days old, and they gave it to me for 30 days.
03:15 And when he was 14, Matthew discovered he could numb his insecurity the same way.
03:20 I finally felt at home for the very first time as soon as I drank alcohol.
03:25 I lay in the grass and I thought to myself,
03:28 "This must be the way that normal people feel all the time."
03:32 Matthew had been keeping up the act for years,
03:34 but even while he was starring on Friends,
03:36 his insecurity and addiction spiraled out of his control.
03:40 How did Chandler change as the person playing him starts to struggle with addiction?
03:46 He didn't change. What was changing was me.
03:50 I was taking 55, like, in a day.
03:52 I weighed 128 pounds.
03:54 I was on Friends, getting watched by 30 million people,
03:57 being beaten down so badly by the disease.
04:00 I would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms,
04:04 see what pills they had in there and steal them.
04:07 And I think they thought, "Well, there's no way that Chandler came in and stole from us."
04:11 That's insane.
04:12 Matthew thought he was hiding his pain, but there was one person who saw through it.
04:16 Jenny.
04:17 And she says, "We know you were drinking."
04:20 And I said, "How?" I thought I was hiding it so well, and she said, "We can smell it."
04:24 Imagine how scary a moment that was.
04:26 And there was one moment where everybody started to see what Jen was seeing.
04:31 Matthew Perry's shocking weight loss has fans and Friends worried.
04:34 He struggled.
04:35 We didn't know.
04:37 We weren't equipped to deal with it.
04:40 Nobody had ever dealt with that, the idea of even losing him.
04:46 Matthew couldn't see the love that Jen had for him until one devastating night.
04:51 I was rushed to the hospital because I was in intense pain in my stomach.
04:57 And by the time I got to the hospital, I was writhing on the ground.
05:02 They put me on a stretcher and they ran me into emergency trauma room.
05:08 And my heart stopped for five minutes.
05:11 I was put on an ECMO machine.
05:13 When you talk to any doctor, it is a Hail Mary.
05:17 It is the last thing that you do before people die.
05:21 And there were five people that night that were put on ECMO machine, and I was the only one who survived.
05:28 Matthew had to finally face that seeking validation from others wouldn't make him happy.
05:33 Only he could do it.
05:35 He told the New York Times, "It's no accident that Chandler is a guy who is trying to deter his own human emotional feelings with laughter.
05:42 That's what I did for years, but that could only take me so far."
05:47 It was a combination of feeling like I wasn't enough, feeling like I was needy, feeling like I didn't matter.
05:55 I know what that is now, and I don't suffer from it anymore.
05:58 And yeah, that's what it lights me up to make somebody laugh.
06:02 But I don't have to do that now.
06:05 Instead, Matthew put his energy into helping others, just like Jen helped him.
06:10 The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says, "I can't stop drinking. Can you help me?"
06:17 I can say yes and follow up and do it.
06:20 The night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in. He was so caring and giving and wise.
06:26 It's a disease. It's not a weakness, and it shouldn't be treated as a weakness.
06:32 That is so needed for someone to be able to see you and be able to help you.
06:38 His greatest gift was his heart.
06:40 He actually gave up his house in Malibu and made it into a rehab center.
06:45 In the spirit of Matthew Perry's enduring commitment to helping others struggling with the disease of addiction,
06:52 we embark on a journey to honor his legacy by establishing the Matthew Perry Foundation.
06:58 I was so proud of him for how he turned to trying to help other people.
07:02 The one thing I got right was that I never gave up. Love always wins.
07:07 When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned.
07:11 I want that to be the first thing that's mentioned.
07:13 I'm going to live the rest of my life proving that.
07:16 [applause]
07:19 [music]
07:22 [music fades]
07:25 [silence]
07:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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