In the star-studded political satire, the Friends alum claims he was slated to portray a Republican journalist.
Matthew Perry gave insight into why he left Adam McKay’s politically charged satire Don’t Look Up.
According to what has come to light, the Friends alum was slated to play a Republican journalist in the movie about two astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) who go on a fruitless media tour to alert people about an impending comet that will destroy the planet. When Perry was in rehab for alcohol and drug abuse, he experienced another Earth-shattering occurrence that caused him to leave the movie and is described in his upcoming memoir. His heart stopped beating for five minutes.
According to Perry’s account in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he lied to his physicians while at a rehab facility in Switzerland by claiming to have terrible stomach discomfort so they could give him medication since he was unable to control his addiction (out Nov. 1). In reality, Perry writes, “I was OK” (via Rolling Stone). “I still felt like I was doing sit-ups all the time, so it was quite unpleasant, but there was no pain,” the patient said.
He was given hydrocodone by the doctors, who also gave him propofol, an anaesthetic, prior to a pain-relieving procedure.
According to Perry, “I got the shot about 11:00 a.m.” “Eleven hours later, in a separate hospital, I awoke. The propofol, it seems, had halted my heart. it takes five minutes. Nothing had been thumping, but it wasn’t a heart attack because I didn’t become unconscious. According to what I was informed, a muscular Swiss man performed CPR on me for the full five minutes while punching and pounding my chest because he really didn’t want the friend from Friends to pass away on his table.”
The actor wonders, “Would he have stopped at three minutes if I hadn’t been on Friends?” “Has Friends saved my life once more? Despite the fact that he may have saved my life, he cracked eight of my ribs.”
According to Perry, he was scheduled to appear in three sequences with Meryl Streep, but due to the discomfort of the treatment, he made the “heartbreaking” decision to leave “the greatest movie I’d ever gotten.” He taped a sequence with Jonah Hill and the other actors, but it wasn’t included in the movie. He says of his time on set, “I was on 1,800 mg of hydrocodone then, too, but nobody noticed.”
Despite the failure of the movie, Perry did gain some valuable knowledge. Without putting up a show, “I was hireable in anything large,” he adds. “Adam and I were the only people in that meeting, simply two men chatting. I will always remember that day, that man, and that moment. What a decent man. I genuinely hope that we will cross paths again.”
In the memoir, which also includes behind-the-scenes tales about his time on the popular sitcom Friends, the actor delves deeply into his alcohol and opiate abuse. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc, among others, supported Perry during his addiction, he claims.
“Similar to penguins, In the wild, penguins would encircle and support each other when they are ill or severely injured “PEOPLE recently spoke with Perry. “Up until the penguin can stand on its own, they proceed around it. The cast essentially did that for me.”
