OK Magazine
Matthew Perry‘s Friends are there for him. Despite the actor airing out his dirty laundry in his bombshell tell-all, his Friends costars weren't bothered by his honesty.
“[They're] all very supportive and proud of him to be coming clean and giving himself closure in so many areas,” an insider spilled of his former castmates, Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox and David Schwimmer. “There was a wariness in the build-up to the release for sure, that he may have spilled a lot more embarrassing secrets than he did.”
As OK! previously reported, Perry had his former costars shaking in their boots ahead of the release of his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. And while he shared behind-the-scenes anecdotes about his time on the beloved '90s sitcom, most of his pages were filled with his struggle with drug and alcohol abuse.
JENNIFER ANISTON LOOKS BACK ON ‘FRIENDS' DAYS AHEAD OF MATTHEW PERRY'S BOMBSHELL MEMOIR RELEASE
And while Perry left it all on the table when it came to sharing his personal battles and failed relationships, being so vulnerable for the world to judge was no easy task.
“Despite his upbeat attitude, there's still a sense of underlying nervousness since he's thrown his heart and soul into this project,” the source continued of Perry. “Going into so much detail about his darkest days and sharing those secrets he held onto for all these years has been no easy process. But he's very happy with how it's all turning out.”
Perry revealed in his tell-all that he was only sober for one season of Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. “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,” the 17 Again actor wrote. “When I have a goatee, it's lots of pills.”
Before his book hit the shelves, Perry revealed some of his costars already reached out about his project with kind words.
“I've gotten some really nice texts from a few of them already, and the book isn't even out yet,” Perry told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America during his Monday, October 31, appearance — while not naming which specific stars reached out.
“So hopefully, [I get] more,” he continued. “It's very important to me that I didn't go after anyone and I wasn't gossipy [in the book].”
Perry also detailed his long-standing crush on Aniston, revealing that before they were even cast in the series, he asked her out knowing she had no interest in him. Despite the hard rejection, Perry and Aniston were “able to sail right past the past” once they landed their roles, “and focus on the fact that we had both gotten the best job Hollywood had to offer.”
Us Weekly spoke to an insider about the Friends cast's reaction to Perry's memoir.
