#11: Matthew Perry on fame and helping people
What Perry learned after becoming famous
“It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no one.”
-Matthew Perry-
Matthew Perry was 25 when he got the call from his agent: he’d been cast on Friends.
Little did he know, over the course of the next few years, Friends would explode, and it would be the answer to a prayer he had made, spontaneously, just weeks earlier.
The prayer addressed his singular goal since late childhood: fame.
About three weeks before my audition for Friends, I was alone in my apartment on Sunset and Doheny, tenth floor—it was very small, but it had a great view, of course—and I was reading in the newspaper about Charlie Sheen.
It said that Sheen was yet again in trouble for something, but I remember thinking, Why does he care—he’s famous? Out of nowhere, I found myself getting to my knees, closing my eyes tightly, and praying. I had never done this before.
“God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.”
Three weeks later, I got cast in Friends.
Perry got the fame, but it didn’t turn out how he’d imagined it.
In his book, Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir—a book about fame and comedy, addiction and overdose, living and life-saving surgery— Perry explains that he thought fame would fill the void of love and attention he’d missed out on as a child. When it didn’t, he turned harder into other things like drugs and alcohol.
His book provides— in addition to genuine hilarity— a clarion call to anyone looking to fame to solve their problems.
Now, all these years later, I’m certain that I got famous so I would not waste my entire life trying to get famous. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.
I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams.
But there was another, more hopeful point that Perry made in his hysterical and unsettling book.
It’s that hopeful point that’s the subject of today’s OGT.
What We’re All Here For
As his fame rose, so did Perry’s drug and alcohol addiction.
He went in and out of rehab for two decades, had 14 stomach surgeries, handfuls of near-death experiences. After all that, he wonders how he made it through. Or, more to the point—why?
I can’t help but ask myself the overwhelming question: Why? Why am I alive? I have a hint to the answer, but it is not fully formed yet. It’s in the vicinity of helping people, I know that, but I don’t know how. The best thing about me, bar none, is that if a fellow alcoholic comes up to me and asks me if I can help them stop drinking, I can say yes, and actually follow up and do it. I can help a desperate man get sober. The answer to “Why am I alive?” I believe lives somewhere in there. After all, it’s the only thing I’ve found that truly feels good. It is undeniable that there is God there.
Perry comes to the conclusion that he’s here to help others with similar challenges. But he also acknowledged that you can’t be helpful for long if you can’t stand on your own two feet.
When someone does something nice for someone else, I see God. But you can’t give away something you don’t have. So, I try to improve myself daily. When those moments come and I am needed, I’ve worked out my shit, and do what we are all here for, which is simply to help other people.
He ends on what now seems like a swan song of sorts.
Love and courage, man—the two most important things. I don’t move forward with fear anymore—I move forward with curiosity. I have an incredible support group around me, and they save me every day, because I have known hell. Hell has definable features, and I want no part of it. But I have the courage to face it, at least.
Who am I going to be? Whoever it is I will take it on as a man who has finally acquired the taste for life. I fought that taste, man, I fought it hard. But in the end admitting defeat was winning. Addiction, the big terrible thing, is far too powerful for anyone to defeat alone. But together, one day at a time, we can beat it down.
The one thing I got right was that I never gave up, I never raised my hands and said, “That’s enough, I can’t take it anymore, you win.” And because of that, I stand tall now, ready for whatever comes next. Someday you, too, might be called upon to do something important, so be ready for it.
And when whatever happens, just think, What would Batman do? and do that.
The OGT
There was a chilling quote in the book that I only recently reread to write this post.
Reading it now, it’s a lot scarier. It’s also heartbreakingly accurate.
It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no one.
It’s hard to tell if there’s a lesson here from the fame / drugs piece. Towards the end of the book, Perry’s says he would have done it again.
If I had to do it all over again, would I still audition for Friends? You bet your ass I would. Would I drink again? You bet your ass I would. If I didn’t have alcohol to soothe my nerves and help me have fun, I would have leaped off a tall building sometime in my twenties.
But I do think we can take a lesson from what he was doing towards the end of his life. Trying to help people suffering from what he had.
So, in the immortal words of Chandler Bing, and in memory of Perry, maybe we should be asking ourselves this question: could we BE any more helpful?
Now, go think like Batman.