Friends star Matthew Perry’s ex-girlfriend, Maeve Quinlan has admitted that the actor’s death ‘wasn’t a shock’ when she learned the tragic news last year.
The Bold and the Beautiful actress Maeve, 59, revealed to Soap Opera Digest how ‘devastated’ she had been to learn of the Friends actor’s death by overdose in his Los Angeles home.
Perry, 54, was found dead in his swimming pool at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, as the result of a ketamine overdose on October 28 last year.
The pair first met in 1994 and began dating in 2002. In the years following their 2003 break-up, Maeve and Perry became estranged.
‘It wasn’t a shock but I still couldn’t believe it happened,’ the actress said of the moment she learned Perry had died.
‘And although we hadn’t seen each other in a while, I miss him very much. He was a close friend,’ she added.
The pair initially lived in the same Los Angeles apartment building as aspiring actors.
‘We would always run into each other at the same time, usually when I was coming back from an acting class or a night out,’ she said.
However, as Perry rose to fame in the role of Chandler Bing on Friends, he later moved out of their building and into the stratosphere of fame.
‘I had the biggest crush on him, but I never saw him again because by the time the show was picked up, he had – like every actor does – moved to the Hollywood hills,’ Maeve said.
She and Perry began dating in 2002, after reconnecting at a charity tennis event – and getting on ‘like a house on fire.’
When they met, Perry was entirely sober. He was also protective of the actress, being mindful of her painful relationship with ex-husband Tom Sizemore, who also struggled with addiction issues of his own.
‘When Matthew and I embarked on a romantic relationship he was 100% sober and was very open about his previous struggles,’ Maeve said.
‘That was his one fully sober year, and we were practically inseparable. One of the reasons he liked being with me was that I didn’t do drugs.’
She continued: ‘Because Matthew was always so extremely careful around me, I never saw him take a drink or abuse any substances. When we were inseparable, he was totally sober.’
However, Perry’s demons were never far from the surface, and he eventually fell into dangerous habits again.
‘As the years went on he would hide it from me if he wasn’t doing well. He had some nasty and scary near-death stuff that he kept from me as he hated to disappoint me if he was using,’ Maeve revealed.
‘We morphed into eventually and seamlessly just being best friends, like brother and sister,’ she said, of their break-up in 2003.
In the years which followed, the former couple grew estranged. Maeve later learned of his continued struggle after reading his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
‘I knew some of his pain because he had told me, but I didn’t know the extent of his pain. I had no idea about how serious these drug rehabs were or the amount of them,’ she said.
‘He knew the pain more than anyone that I had inside from trying to get my ex-husband sober, but you can’t make someone sober, I sadly learned from that marriage. They have to do it themselves,’ she said.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner deemed Perry’s death an accident, revealing how he had drowned in the heated end of his pool – a secondary factor in his death, primarily attributed to drug overdose.
Those close to the actor told investigators how he had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety.
However, the coroner’s report, released December 16, revealed that the levels of ketamine in his system were higher than expected, and couldn’t be explained by the treatment, which he had last taken almost two weeks earlier.
The report also suggested that Perry had been ‘reportedly clean from 19 months’ from drug use.
Jennifer Aniston, his Friends co-star and close friend, revealed how she had spoken to him on the day of his death.
‘He was happy. he was healthy. He had quit smoking,’ the actress, 54, told Variety in December.
‘He was happy – that’s all I know. I was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty. He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy.’
She continued: ‘I want people to know he was really healthy, and getting healthy. He was on a pursuit. He worked so hard. He really was dealt a tough one.’
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