Matthew Perry’s family knew that his character Chandler Bing’s wedding to the onscreen love of his life, Monica Geller, was more than just another milestone in Friends.
The episode carried a significance for his family that viewers might never have suspected.
Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick has now revealed why the on-screen wedding was bittersweet for his loved ones.
Matthew Perry’s sister revealed why Chandler and Monica’s wedding was bittersweet
Millions of fans shared the joy when characters Chandler Bing and Monica Geller tied the knot in the Season 7 finale that aired in 2001.
However, Perry’s loved ones always wondered whether he would ever find that same happiness in real life, especially because of his struggles with ad**ction.
The actor was open about his dependence on pills and other substances for most of his life, even during the filming of the much-loved episode.
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“I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center – at the height of my highest point in Friends,” he wrote in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing.
Perry passed away in 2023 at the age of 54 due to the acute effects of k*tamine.
He never got married or had children, so when Perry’s character married Monica on the show, it was a way for his family to see him walk down the aisle.
“We all knew that he had wanted that in life,” Mia Perry Bowick said
“When we saw that wedding, we all knew that he had wanted that in life,” his sister Mia Perry Bowick recently told People.
“He wanted a partner, and he wanted kids,” she added.
Bowick explained that the family knew how serious her brother’s ad**ction was, thus making them always uncertain about what his future would look like.
“We all knew how serious his disorder was, so there was this sense of, ‘Who knows what’s going to happen?’” she told the outlet.
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Perry revealed in his memoir that Chandler Bing’s journey on the show was also a record of his dependence on substances. His noticeable weight fluctuations were a stark indicator of his struggles.
“When I’m carrying weight, it’s alc*hol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills,” he said.
He has also revealed in interviews that he didn’t know how to stop and would fake back injuries or migraines to get his hands on pills.
By the end of the third season, he was trying to get 55 Vicodin a day to prevent getting “so sick.”
Perry once admitted he was “high as a kite” when he proposed to Molly Hurwitz
The closest that Perry got to a marriage was the one and only engagement he had in 2020.
He has dated several stars over the years, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Mean Girls star Lizzy Caplan.
He announced in 2020 that he was engaged to literary manager Molly Hurwitz, but they never made it to the altar. They broke up a few months after his proposal.
The 17 Again star said he was “high as a kite” and “on one knee” when he proposed to Hurwitz.
“I bought her a ring because I was desperate that she would leave me,” he wrote, saying he didn’t want to be “this injured and alone” during the pandemic.
But he couldn’t remember actually proposing to her and found out much later that they were engaged.
“I was slowly beginning to realize that I was engaged, lived with a woman and two dogs,” he wrote… “…I didn’t remember — needless to say, we broke up.”
Bowick spoke about her brother’s “loneliness” in the upcoming documentary The One About Matthew Perry
Bowick is opening up about the darker parts of her brother’s life in the upcoming three-part documentary series The One About Matthew Perry.
“My brother would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill,” Bowick said in the trailer for the docuseries, releasing on October 27.
“He spent $7 million trying to get sober. That’s how seriously he took his disease,” she added.
In 2023, Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub, leading to five people being convicted for their role in his k*tamine overd**e.
An autopsy confirmed that his passing was due to the acute effects of k*tamine, with contributing factors including drowning, coronary artery disease, and so on.
The five convicted individuals included two doctors, a supplier, a dr*g counselor, and Perry’s personal assistant.
“We all miss him. What a sad story,” one commented online
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