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“All of those things, Julia and the dream house and $1 million a week, were wonderful, and I will be eternally grateful for all of them. They just weren’t the answer.”
Those are some of the words Matthew Perry uses to describe his life in the ’90s in his new memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” out Nov. 1.
The “Friends” actor, who played Chandler Bing in the sitcom, reflects on his widely publicized relationship with Julia Roberts, including what led to the beginning and end of their ’90s romance.
Describing the height of their relationship in 1995, Perry writes, “She was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was on the number one show on TV.”
How did he and Roberts first connect, you ask? According to the memoir, Perry said he was encouraged by “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman to woo the “Pretty Woman” star with flowers and a card, in an effort to try and get Roberts to appear on the sitcom.
“(Roberts) would only do the show if she could be in my story line,” Perry writes. “Was I having a good year or what?”
Three dozen red roses and a card that read “the only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers” later, Roberts agreed to be on the post-Super Bowl episode.
Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts hug each other on the set of “Friends.”Liaison / Getty Images
But the wooing did not stop there. According to Perry, this outreach was followed by a three-month-long courtship of daily (flirty) faxes.
“Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive,” Perry writes. “It was like she was placed on this planet to make the world smile, and now, in particular, me.”
He describes Roberts’ faxes as “so smart — the way she strung sentences together, the way she saw the world, the way she articulated her unique thoughts, all was so captivating.”
After what Perry describes to be hundreds of faxes and a first date at his house, the two began dating. Perry visited Roberts’ family and celebrated New Year’s Eve in Taos, New Mexico with her. Perry describes their trip to a Taos mountaintop as a day he wished he could “relive … every day for the rest of (his) life.”
“As we sat there, she made me feel like the king of the world,” Perry writes.
Perry also recalls his then-girlfriend’s appearance on the famous Season Two episode “The One After the Super Bowl.” Roberts played Perry’s character Chandler’s childhood classmate Susie Moss.
In the episode, the pair begins seeing one another, only for Susie to reveal her true intentions: She steals all of Chandler’s clothes as payback for embarrassing her in elementary school.
“Our kiss on the couch was so real people thought it was real. It was,” Perry says. “She was wonderful on the show, and our chemistry seemed to seep off televisions all across America.”
Perry’s memoir also chronicles his addiction in extensive detail. Perry describes difficult moments he faced due to his struggles with alcohol and prescription medicine, which he alludes ultimately led to his breakup with the Oscar winner two months later.
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me,” Perry writes. “I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
Perry goes on to recall the night he watched Roberts win an Oscar for her role in “Erin Brockovich” — a moment he says he watched from his room at rehab.
“I was incredibly happy for her,” he writes. “As for me, I was just grateful to have made it one more day.”
Anahy Diaz
Anahy Diaz is a Platforms NBC Page at TODAY.com, where she contributes to the management of newsletters and main cover stories. Anahy is a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso with a B.A. in Multimedia Journalism.
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