Matthew Perry’s best performance wasn’t in “Friends.”
It was like a newly sober good guy who just wanted to help others get clean.
According to claims reported exclusively by Alison Boshoff for the Mail, the Real Matthew Perry was a monster.
In the later years of his life, sources say, he violently attacked women. He was over 50 and cheated on his then fiancée Molly Hurwitz with young women – one only 19 – whom he met on the exclusive dating app Raya.
He was capable of great cruelty, while he considered himself a paragon of virtue.
He sold the world, but especially other struggling addicts, a package of lies.
Here Perry described his “best friend,” his assistant and sober companion of ten years whom he pseudonymously called “Erin,” in his bestselling memoir: “the nicest person in the world.”
Matthew Perry’s best performance wasn’t in “Friends.” It was like a newly sober good guy who just wanted to help others get clean.
According to claims reported exclusively by Alison Boshoff for the Mail, the real Matthew Perry was a monster. In the later years of his life, sources say, he violently attacked women. He was over fifty and cheated on his then fiancée Molly Hurwitz (photo) with young women he met through the exclusive dating app Raya.
He was capable of great cruelty, while he considered himself a paragon of virtue. He sold the world, but especially other struggling addicts, a package of lies. (Image: Perry with live-in sober companion Morgan Moses, whom he attacked).
He wrote that “Erin” was at his bedside every night for five months while he was at his lowest, recovering from intestinal surgery and left with an ostomy bag: “She became my best friend… (she) would get to know my problems better than any doctor I had ever seen’.
“Erin,” as Boshoff also revealed, was Morgan Moses, who stopped working for Perry in 2021 after he allegedly pushed her against a wall and threw her “on a bed.”
Moses subsequently cut off all contact with Perry. No wonder why.
A younger woman, a subordinate, being forced into bed by her older, rich, famous, powerful and well-protected boss – in my opinion the implications are clear.
In June, Perry also allegedly hurled a coffee table at his ex-fiancée Molly Hurwitz after she dared to break up with him.
She had caught him texting much younger women on dating apps, and he had even bought one of them a Valentine’s Day gift.
“He… told (Molly) she was crazy,” the source said. “He hated that she dumped him.”
How will Hollywood commemorate Perry now? With awards season approaching, one wonders: will Perry get the halo treatment, included in the “In Memoriam” segment at the Oscars?
Or will we honestly deal with who Perry was, the lies he told, his allegedly abhorrent treatment of women – without using his addictions as an excuse?
Without insisting that he was something, it now seems that he wasn’t?
In retrospect, it makes sense why the surviving ‘Friends’ cast didn’t take to Instagram on their own, but waited until two days after Perry’s death to issue a joint statement.
Perry’s legacy is not just Perry’s. It also belongs to “Friends,” that last wholesome sitcom of the ’90s monoculture, one that may never be experienced the same way again.
Morgan Moses stopped working for Perry in 2021 after he allegedly pushed her against a wall and threw her “on a bed.” Moses subsequently cut off all contact with Perry. No wonder why. A younger woman, a subordinate, being forced into bed by her older, rich, famous, powerful and well-protected boss – in my opinion the implications are clear.
How will Hollywood commemorate Perry now? With awards season approaching, one wonders: will Perry get the halo treatment, included in the “In Memoriam” segment at the Oscars? Or will we deal honestly with who Perry was?
Here was Perry telling Diane Sawyer, in a soft-focus primetime interview last year, talking about appearing on “Friends” despite his crippling addictions for the entire decade: “I would show up blindly with a hangover. Like shaking and crazy hangover’.
According to Perry’s own timeline, in 1998 he was taking 55 Vicodin a day — on top of drinking and smoking and whatever else he did.
Imagine what a disruption he must have been on set. Imagine the chaos he caused, the late filming, the sheer disrespect towards the cast and crew.
It wouldn’t have been hard to write Perry out of “Friends” for a while. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to tell him to take a year to go to rehab and get himself back together – especially in a pre-TMZ era, when scandals were easier to contain.
But ‘Friends’ as an ensemble made too many people, too much money.
During the show’s reunion, which aired in 2021, Perry cut a sad figure – clearly separated from the other five cast members. That all makes sense now.
In the introduction to Perry’s memoir, his co-star Lisa Kudrow wrote that the question she was asked most was, “How is Matthew Perry doing?”
It was a question, she wrote, that she never quite knew how to answer.
Perry’s book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for almost a year and rose again after his death.
How should we view his book now?
A book that he dedicated to all his ‘fellow sufferers’. A book he promoted while claiming to be 18 months sober, including his appearance at the ‘Friends’ reunion – even though sources have since told the Mail that Perry was ‘never clean’. That he actually had a harem of young women who came to his house and supplied him with drugs, often Oxycontin.
How will active addicts and people in recovery view Perry’s fabrications as anything other than treason?
Perry isn’t the first to fake an addiction memoir. In 2003, author James Frey published “A Million Little Pieces,” which spent fifteen consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and became an Oprah’s Book Club pick.
And then the website The Smoking Gun revealed that much of the book was made up. Frey was forced to go back to Oprah and essentially commit seppuku. Refunds were offered to readers and future editions were published with a disclaimer.
Perry’s book should at least be reissued now with a similar warning from the reader.
During the ‘Friends’ reunion (pictured), which aired in 2021, Perry cut a sad figure – clearly separated from the other five cast members. That all makes sense now.
As for that legacy he so desperately wanted, it’s all but destroyed.
Sources told US Weekly on Wednesday that Perry “had to pay for a lot of women to go to therapy” because of the discomfort he felt around him.
One nurse who worked with him was so traumatized that she left the profession altogether, the magazine reports. His outbursts of anger were constant: throwing objects, knocking over tables, hitting walls.
One source claims he then tried to minimize the violence by saying, “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have.”
They also say an ex-girlfriend in her early 20s threatened to sue Perry in 2020 for emotional and psychological abuse, and that he got her addicted to opioids. Perry allegedly struck a deal with her and made her sign a non-disclosure agreement.
There are probably other women with similar stories to tell.
Matthew Perry was not a “friend” until the end, but instead a cheater.
The lies he told were bigger than the lies he told himself, and he left real messes behind – among those who loved him, those he allegedly harmed physically and emotionally, and the addicts who saw in him their own potential . .
There is no Hollywood ending here.
