How Keanu Reeves Reportedly Reacted to Matthew Perry’s Digs Toward Him in Memoir

Keanu Reeves was apparently just as blindsided by Matthew Perry’s comments about him in his memoir as the rest of the world. According to Us Weekly, the John Wick star’s reported reaction to the comments was revealed, leaving plenty of questions about how it got to this point.

“Keanu thought the comments came out of left field,” a source told the outlet. “It’s kind of backfired on Matthew anyway, which is why he had to apologize.”

The Friends alum’s memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, has been incredibly open and honest about Perry’s struggles with substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, old friends and his apparent enemies. But the comments on Reeves, which occur many times in the book, seem to come out of nowhere while Perry discusses those who were close to him and died.

“River [Phoenix] was a beautiful man inside and out – too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry wrote about the two late actors in comparison with Reeves. He would do the same later in the book while hitting on Chris Farley’s death in 1997.

“I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out [about Farley’s death],” he wrote before adding Reeves back to the mix. “Keanu Reeves walks among us.”

The backlash was swift, despite it being Perry’s memoir and his right to hold these opinions. And the Friends alum was quick to respond with an apology and semi-explanation. “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu. I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”

Apart from the reputation Keanu Reeves has acquired on the internet and in Hollywood over the years, he was just as close to the tragic death of River Phoenix as Perry would have been. He spoke about his own grief back in 2021 in an Esquire interview.

“I hate speaking about him in the past,” Reeves told the outlet. “So I almost always gotta keep it present. He was a really special person, so original, unique, smart, talented, fiercely creative. Thoughtful. Brave. And funny. And dark. And light. It was great to have known him. To-yeah. Inspirational. Miss him.”