While “Friends” made Matthew Perry a household name and helped the actor amass a staggering net worth, the actor couldn’t bear to watch himself on TV. Speaking with Tom Power, the “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” actor detailed the sad reason he wasn’t a fan of the show. “I was taking 55 Vicodin in a day. I weighed 128 pounds. I was on ‘Friends’ getting watched by 30 million people — that’s why I can’t watch the show because I was, like, brutally thin,” Perry candidly explained during the live interview. “I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show because I could go ‘drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine. … I could tell season-by-season how I looked.” He added, “Alcoholism did not care that I was on Friends.”
The actor eventually got sober, although he certainly dropped a pretty penny to help make it happen. During a 2022 interview with The New York Times, he confessed, “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober.” At the time, Perry told the outlet he had been drug and alcohol-free for 18 months.
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Later in his conversation with Tom Power, the actor discussed the enduring appeal of “Friends” and shared that his perspective on watching the sitcom was beginning to change. “I think I’m going to start to watch it because it really has been — first of all, it was an incredible ride — but it’s been an incredible thing to watch it touch the hearts of different generations,” he shared, noting that the show has become “this important, significant thing.”
