The fear of rejection, perhaps, makes people from all walks of life think of managing risks in unscrupulous ways. Of course, Costanza is a fictional character, but the measures that Perry used to adopt are exactly the same. It’s a theoretically faulty logic, but that doesn’t seem to matter to these men. He wants to be the macho guy who dumps, not the wimp who gets dumped.

In the episode The Pez Dispenser, from Seinfeld, the other global success, George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander) breaks up with his girlfriend pre-emptively hoping that it’d give him an upper hand. Later, as he was afraid that he’d be abandoned by the women he loved, he came up with the idea of dragging romantic relationships to a dead end.

He wanted his father and mother to get back together and, when that didn’t happen, he started putting his feelings into a box and never let anybody take a peek at it. His parents got divorced when he was very young and he couldn’t find a way to put that piece of fact in the back seat and move on. Many members attached to the cast and crew of Friends, over the years, have mentioned that Perry’s jokes would be worked into the script.īing, to be frank, borrows several qualities from Perry. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.” Perry, in keeping the tone somewhat light even while recounting his worst days, almost brings Bing back to the page. He continues, “You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season - when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol when I’m skinny, it’s pills. He's talking about the iconic scene where his character goes down on his knees to propose to Monica Geller (Courteney Cox). My weight varied between 128 pounds and 225 pounds during the years of Friends.” In the memoir, he writes, “I’m wearing the same clothes in the final episode of six and the first of seven (it’s supposed to be the same night), but I must have lost fifty pounds in the off-season. The fans of the show always knew that something was off with him. Perry’s problem, or, as he calls it, “the Big Terrible Thing,” was never a secret. But he’s been on the wheel of sobriety for a while and, come on, who are we kidding? Fame has never bidden him goodbye ever since he starred in the sitcom Friends as Chandler Bing – he makes jokes when he’s uncomfortable.Īnd, this autumn, in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he opens up about being uncomfortable in his own skin and the pain he shoulders wherever he goes due to the brain he’s been burdened with.

He’s just written a memoir now so, he checks all the boxes. An addict’s biggest fear is not getting drugs every day. Matthew Perry is a popular actor and a popular addict. An actor’s biggest fear is not attaining fame. A writer’s biggest fear is getting distracted.

Matthew perry memoir review