Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler Bing in the popular sitcom Friends, has opened up in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, about how he missed a chance to be a part of the multi-starrer film, Don’t Look Up, by Adam McKay, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jonah Hill. The 53-year-old says that this would have been the “biggest movie I’d gotten ever.”
Rolling Stone reports that his book, Perry details how his heart stopped working for five minutes when he was at a Switzerland rehab centre. According to the actor, a hydrocodone and propofol combination was the reason behind his heart stopping.
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Perry was signed on to play a right-wing journalist in the film, and had even shot a scene with Hill. He was also set to share the screen with Streep.
When he went to the rehab centre, Perry said that he lied to the doctors about having stomach aches in order to be prescribed hydrocodone. However, he admits, “In fact, I was ok,” adding, “It still felt like I was constantly doing a sit-up — so it was very uncomfortable — but it wasn’t pain.”
The doctors prescribed surgery to help the actor get rid of the pain, but he had already taken hydrocodone the night before. When he was also administered the anaesthetic propofol during the surgery, the combined effect of the two drugs caused his heart to stop.
In his book, Perry says, “I was given the shot at 11:00 a.m.”, further adding, “I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn’t a heart attack — I didn’t flatline — but nothing had been beating.” He also adds that once he recovered, he was informed that one of the medical professionals attending him “really didn’t want the guy from ‘Friends’ dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest”. Perry wonders whether it was Friends that ended up saving his life once again.
The actor also quips that despite having saved his life, the said person had also broken eight of his ribs while doing CPR on him.
He explains that he was having to deal with a lot of pain after the surgery, as a result of which he had to pull out from Don’t Look Up. He called his decision to quit the film “heartbreaking”.
