A Near-Death Experience Prevented A Matthew Perry Cameo In Don't Look Up
When news broke that "Friends" star and television icon Matthew Perry reportedly died at the age of 54 on Saturday, October 28, 2023, it was difficult for fans the world over to truly believe it. Of course, fans also know that the Chandler actor had publicly struggled with sobriety throughout his life. In recent years he'd made plenty of headlines for the startling revelations from the frontlines of that battle — many of which he'd written about in his 2022 memoir.
One such revelation is that, medically speaking, Perry had actually been dead once before — and that the actor made a huge career decision when he came back to life five minutes later. Not only that, but he credited "Friends" (and the intervention of a large man from Switzerland) with his successful resurrection.
A shot at silver screen redemption...
As Matthew Perry explained in his memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" (and reported by Rolling Stone), he'd been cast in Adam McKay's 2021 satire, "Don't Look Up," which featured star-turns from Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep, among a huge cast of others. And, as it turned out, Perry was set to appear in scenes with Streep's character of United States President Orlean.
Perry had been cast as a conservative journalist who was set to appear in three scenes opposite Streep. In the book, Perry describes landing the role as the "biggest movie I'd gotten ever." And while his work as Chandler Bing on "Friends" is beloved, his work on the big screen never really generated the same kind of success. In this author's opinion, his most memorable turn on film was in the 1997 buddy comedy "Almost Heroes," which, sadly, is more well known for being Chris Farley's last starring role than for anything that actually happens in the movie (which, honestly, is pretty fun).
The rest of the details of what Perry would have done in "Don't Look Up" don't appear to have been made public, and the one scene he'd managed to film sometime between late 2020 and early 2021 was cut by the time the film debuted that November.
So why did he only get to film one scene? According to Perry, he was in the throes of opioid and alcohol addiction at the time — which led him to what Rolling Stone describes as "a luxury rehab in Switzerland."
...Followed by a shot of propofol
While in rehab, Perry recounts in his book, he misled his doctors about chronic stomach pain so they'd prescribe the painkiller hydrocodone. But the doctors weren't satisfied with that solution.
"At some point," Perry writes, "the rehab geniuses decided that to help my stomach 'pain,' they'd put some kind of weird medical device in my back, but they'd need to do surgery to insert it."
Perry didn't sleep the night before the surgery was scheduled to take place, and he took 1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone. So when he finally got onto the operating table the following day, the doctors administered the anesthetic propofol — which Perry notes in his book as "you know, the drug that killed Michael Jackson." From there, fake stomach pain and a "weird medical device" was the least of Perry's problems:
I was given the shot at 11:00 A.M. I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn't a heart attack—I didn't flatline — but nothing had been beating. [...] I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn't want the guy from Friends dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn't been on Friends, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?
A heartbreaking decision
The combination of the musclebound Swiss doctor and the 234 episodes of "Friends" on which he appeared brought Matthew Perry back from death. It also wound up breaking eight of his ribs in the process. The experience — and the pain that lingered after it ended — forced him to make what he called a "heartbreaking" call. He dropped out of "Don't Look Up," and the one scene he'd filmed didn't make it to the final cut of the movie.
It goes without saying that Perry's passing today is tragic, as was his lifelong battle against addiction. It put him through hell, and it kept him from sharing more of his immense gifts with the world. We all know Perry's comic timing and performance chops were a cut above almost everyone else in show business at the time — his abilities are what helped take "Friends" from just another sitcom to one of the most beloved TV series of all time.
That he could render his brushes with death so eloquently — and above all, with so much obvious grace and dark humor — just further shows how huge of a loss his passing is to us all.
Matthew Perry will truly be missed.