2024-10-29 07:30:04
Matthew Perry‘s family is remembering the late “Friends” star one year after his death.
The family — including Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, stepfather and “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison and sisters Caitlin, Emily and Madeline Morrison — opened up to Savannah Guthrie in a “Today” show interview that aired Monday.
Perry, who was 54 at the time of his death, was found unresponsive and face-down in the “heated end” of his pool a year ago Monday on Oct. 28, 2023. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner‘s office revealed in December of last year that Perry’s cause of death was due to “the acute effects of ketamine.”
“It hits me so hard that he’s not there,” Suzanne Morrison said.
“I’m a very lucky woman,” she said. “But there was one glitch, there was one problem that I couldn’t— I couldn’t conquer it, I couldn’t help him.”
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“Oh gosh yeah,” Keith Morrison said about Perry’s “light up the room” personality. “It’s something you’re born with or you’re not born with. And he was certainly born with it in spades.”
“But it must be said, I think, that he was very lonely in his soul,” Perry’s mother said, with her husband chiming in, “The sort of exterior that people know about hid an insecure, often very sad guy.”
Perry starred as Chandler Bing in the hit ’90s and early aughts sitcom “Friends.” He was open about his struggles with addiction, particularly in his New York Times-bestselling book, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” a culmination of his decades-long struggle with sobriety, alcoholism and drug addiction.
“If it doesn’t stop, we’re going to lose so many million people,” Perry’s mother said through tears.
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The interview also highlighted the family’s work to create the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada. Suzanne Morrison shared Perry with her ex-husband John Bennett Perry, their only child together. The Morrisons, who married in 1981 and share four children of their own, started the foundation to assist agencies and organizations that help people who are struggling with addiction and substance abuse.
“No amount of money will cure an addict, (they need) something else,” Keith Morrison said.
California prosecutors have pursued charges against five people in connection to Perry’s death for “distributing ketamine to Perry during the final weeks of the actor’s life.”
Three people have pleaded guilty: Dr. Mark Chavez, a former ketamine clinic operator; Perry’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa; and an acquaintance, Erik Fleming.
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