Friends star Matthew Perry was found dead at 54 years of old in his L.A. home at approximately 4pm PT on Saturday. The Los Angeles Times reports that Perry’s body was in a hot tub and that there weren’t any drugs found at the scene of his death, nor was there any evidence to give authorities reason to suspect foul play. Perry’s passing is currently being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
On the social media platform X, a number of user have drawn comparisons to the passing of Perry to fictional character BoJack Horseman, a Netflix comedy series that chronicles the life and times of a depressed sitcom actor struggling to make a comeback. While several real-life actors were cited as being the inspiration behind the character, one name that continually came up during the show’s run was Matthew Perry. From Reddit forum discussions, to and Inverse article that names several actors, with Perry at the top, a number of people have drawn similarities between BoJack’s substance abuse and sarcastic attitude and Perry’s own persona on Friends, and his private life outside of the show.
Literally @BoJackHorseman https://t.co/X1ahHsV6r6
— Futon (@chaos_futon) October 29, 2023
While Perry’s battles with addiction were reported on for years, the actor divulged personal, first-hand accounts of his drug and alcohol use in his November, 2022 memoir. Chandler estimated that he spent around $7 million in attempts to get sober during the course of his life, and says that he was self-medicating so much on Friends that when the show finally ended and they filmed its final episode, that he was completely apathetic: “I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside.”
He added that after the show was finished and with no “ridiculously high-paying, dream-come-true kind of a job to go to,” and not having a special person in his life to come home to, that he ultimately got deeper and deeper into narcotics.
Perry added that in the episode he filmed where he and Monica get married, he headed directly into rehab for alcohol abuse afterward. The Williamstown, Massachusetts native also added that the only season in which he was nominated for an Emmy, season 9, was also the only season he performed sober: “I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”
It’s because of his peripatetic struggle with drugs and the fact that he was the star of one of the biggest and most widely-watched American sitcoms of all time, that prompted people to make connections between the two.
One X user wrote: “I cannot be the only to notice the eerie resemblance of Matthew Perry and Bojack Horseman. Back in the 90s both of them were in a very famous TV Show”
While another penned: “Matthew Perry was famous in the 90s and overdosed into his pool. The ultimate Bojack Horseman reference.”
Someone else penned that the BoJack Horseman writers room somehow prognosticated Perry’s death with their show: “Crazy that Matthew Perry basically had the BoJack Horseman ending. RIP.”
Another wrote: “I always thought there was a lot of Bojack Horseman in Matthew Perry, like somehow the character was based on him, watching friends would be different after he passed away, may he rest in peace”
Also like the titular character from the series, Perry managed to transition into film after a television career, however, the sequel to The Whole Nine Yards co-starring Bruce Willis didn’t perform well at the box office. Perry would then go on to star in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, however the show would be canceled after a single season, despite strong early ratings numbers.
Perry would then go on to write Mr. Sunshine and Go On, but those shows were canceled as well. Perry commented on these projects in his memoir, penning: “I wasn’t devastated by the lack of success — as I said, I knew a hit TV show couldn’t fill my soul,”
In 2020, Perry was up for a role in Don’t Look Up where he would’ve starred in a few scenes alongside Meryl Streep. He said that the film would’ve been “the biggest movie I’d gotten ever,” but at the time when he received the offer, he was in Switzerland performing a medical surgery that would’ve inserted a device inside of his body to help manage his stomach pain.
The propofol anesthesia he was given during the surgery had stopped his heart for five minutes, Perry said, and in the process of trying to revive him, the doctor’s performing chest compressions that ultimately cracked eight of his ribs. He was left in such excruciating pain that he ultimately dropped out of the movie, however, Perry seems to have taken a positive away from the experience: “Being in ‘Don’t Look Up’ didn’t work out because my life was on fire, but I learned an important lesson: I was hirable in something big without putting on a show.”
The Daily Dot’s thoughts and condolences are with Perry’s loved ones.
