How Jennifer Aniston Helped ‘Friends’ Co-Star Matthew Perry Confront His Addiction

Matthew Perry’s Friends co-stars have played a pivotal role in his sobriety journey. The actor, who is best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the sitcom, opens up about the behind-the-scenes moments of his time on the show while struggling with drug and alcohol addiction in his new memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, out Nov. 1, including how Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his problems with alcohol. 

“I know you’re drinking,” Aniston told Perry, whose memoir is excerpted by The Times. Perry, who also shared in his memoir that he had a crush on Aniston during filming, wrote, “I had long since gotten over her – ever since she started dating Brad Pitt, I was fine – and had worked out exactly how long to look at her without it being awkward, but still, to be confronted by Jennifer Aniston was devastating.”

“And I was confused,” he added, writing that he asked Aniston how she could tell. “I’ve been trying to hide it.” Perry continued, “‘We can smell it,’ she said, in a kind of weird but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer. ‘I know I’m drinking too much,’ I said, ‘but I don’t exactly know what to do about it.’”

Perry also addressed the moment in a preview for his upcoming interview with Diane Sawyer, set to air Oct. 28 on ABC. The actor also shared that Aniston continued to stick with him during difficult times. “She was the one that reached out the most,” Perry said. “You know, I’m really grateful to her for that.”

Perry’s fellow co-stars Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc were also supportive of him throughout, he told PEOPLE. “It’s like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up,” Perry said. “They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.”

The actor, now 53, also opened up to the magazine about his near-death experience at age 49 when his colon burst due to opioid overuse. “The doctors told my family that I had a 2% chance to live,” he said. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”