Matthew Perry is certainly giving the people what they want, with the announcement that he is penning a memoir that will take us behind the scenes of the hit show Friends.
It’s been reported that Perry will also address his longtime battle with addiction in the book. Deadline has divulged Perry will be receiving a fee somewhere in the seven-figure realm for the autobiography and that Flatiron books will publish it.
The publisher said it won the rights to the book “in a major overnight pre-empt” which means they secured the deal before it went to auction.
“In the book, Perry will take readers behind-the-scenes and onto the soundstage of the sitcom while opening up about his private struggles with addiction. It is set to be a candid and self-aware book told with his trademark humor, with Perry vividly detailing his lifelong battle with the disease and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all,” the publication reports.
The book is the first memoir to be written by any of the Friends cast.
Perry starred as Chandler Bing in the hit series which wrapped in 2004. The cast went on to do a reunion show this year. During the reunion, Perry went into detail about his troubles with substance abuse.
During the reunion episode he told the cast, “To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh. And it’s not healthy, for sure. But I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get, I would freak out.”
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Fellow cast member, Jennifer Aniston touched on Perry’s addiction issues in June in an interview with Today. “I didn’t understand the level of anxiety and self-torture [that] was put on Matthew Perry, if he didn’t get that laugh, and the devastation that he felt. Which makes a lot of sense,” she said.
She also added, “I’ve had so many gorgeous times in my life, but that was such a specific experience as an act creatively [and] how it affected all of our careers. We didn’t understand in those four walls of stage 24 the impact that it was having on the world, which was also, that was crazy. Talk about emotions.”
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