“I really loved him,” in an Instagram video, Azaria talked about his lifelong pal.
In light of Matthew Perry’s unexpected passing on Saturday, Hank Azaria is honoring one of his longtime friends.
On Sunday, Azaria,59, shared a video on Instagram honoring Perry, who passed away the previous day at his Los Angeles home from what appeared to be a drowning.
“Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles, when I moved there. I was 21, he was 16,” declaring his friend “the funniest man ever,” Azaria began the lengthy homage to his friend.
“Matthew and I became really good friends and we were really more like brothers for a long time. We drank a lot together, we laughed a lot together, we were there for each other in the early days of our career,” remarked the Simpsons actor.
“I really loved him. A lot of us who were close to him felt like we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago because — as he documented in his autobiography — there was so much suffering,” Azaria went on, mentioning Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry’s memoir from 2022, “I had to pick up and put down that biography, like, 11 times, it was so painful for me to read.”
As a recovering alcoholic, the actor thought back on how Perry’s battles with addiction influenced their connection.
“I’ve been clean for seventeen years, and I would like to mention that Matthew brought me to AA that first night.” We attended meetings together for the entire first year I was sober,” Azaria went on. “He was incredibly knowledgeable, kind, and kind. And he was a huge factor in my sobriety. And I sincerely hope that he could have, you know, discovered the ability inside himself to live the silver life more often.
However, it’s devastating for those of us who knew and loved him intimately. He was just missed. He was just missed. One of the most awful aspects of this illness is that it simply takes away the one you love.”
In the eulogy, Azaria also lauded the humorous abilities of his late friend.
“He was like a genius; he just lived for laughter, and he laughed every night.” He would simply hang out and begin to weave comic strands together. Here, there, a joke for effect. Here, there, a joke for effect. He would then tie them all together in a crescendo of humor by the conclusion of the evening. Most of the evenings you spent with Matthew ended with you sobbing and laughing.
“As an actor, he was so brilliant,” he said. I only hope that the rest of his career could have been what it could have been for the world, for me, and for us.
The Friends actor openly shared his battle with alcoholism and addiction, as Azaria pointed out. Perry shared his tale in a cover story for PEOPLE last year, saying, “I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side again.” I couldn’t put it all down until I was somewhat comfortably sober and out of the active disease of addiction and drinking. I was fairly positive that if I did, it would benefit others.
Perry predicted that his followers would react, “They’ll be a little surprised because it gets dark,” to his candor. Addicts and alcoholics will find a great deal of resonance with it, and perhaps benefit from it. Externally, my life appears to be going well. It does, in fact. Yes, it may be at times, but I believe people will be shocked by how awful things might become at various points and how close I was to passing away. As I explain in the book, nobody would be surprised if I died, but it would shock them. And that’s a very scary thing to be living with. So my hope is that people will relate to it and know this disease attacks everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not, the disease doesn’t care.”
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In 2021, Azaria acknowledged that he had in fact attempted to land a job similar to Perry’s on Friends, but that attempt finally failed when he tried out twice for the Joey role, which went to Matt LeBlanc.
In an episode of The Late Late Show, he told James Corden, “We all read the script because Matthew Perry is actually a very dear friend of mine.” “We were all so eager to be in it, even though we had no idea it would become the massive phenomenon that it did.”
Nevertheless, Azaria’s request was eventually granted when he appeared on the show again as David, Phoebe Buffay’s (Lisa Kudrow) boyfriend in subsequent seasons.
