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Topics: Celebrity, US News, Film and TV
Emily Puckering
Matthew Perry has revealed he was set to appear in Netflix's Don't Look Up alongside Meryl Streep, but was forced to pull out after his 'heart stopped for 5 minutes'.
The actor, best known for his role as Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom Friends, is soon set to release his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, and excerpts from the book have been teased in recent weeks.
And one of these excerpts has revealed how Perry was actually lined up to appear in Netflix's apocalyptic black comedy Don't Look Up, but sadly was unable to do so due to a severe medical scare while at a treatment center in Switzerland.
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Securing the role in Adam McKay's political comedy would have been the 'biggest movie I’d gotten ever', Perry wrote in his memoir.
The actor would have played the role of a Republican journalist, which would have seen him shoot three scenes with Streep, who played the role of a fictional US president.
Perry was suffering from crippling alcohol and opioid addiction - something he has been very open about throughout his career. And around the time he shot a group scene with Jonah Hill for the movie between 2020-2021, he went to a luxury rehab facility in Switzerland, where he was put up in a villa overlooking Lake Geneva.
He even had his own butler and chef.
Perry admits in his memoir to insisting he had stomach pain to his doctors so they would give him drugs, when in reality, 'I was OK'.
"It still felt like I was constantly doing a sit-up — so it was very uncomfortable — but it wasn’t pain."
Hydrocodone was being prescribed at the rehab facility and when doctors decided to operate on Perry to 'put some kind of weird medical device in my back', things took a turn for the worst.
In the operating room, Perry was administered propofol, which is regularly used for anesthesia, but the actor's heart was stopped as a result.
"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 writes.
"I was told that some beefy Swiss guy 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.
"If I hadn’t been on Friends, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?"
Perry then added: “He may have saved my life, but he also broke eight of my ribs."
Following the traumatic ordeal, Perry was in too much pain to continue filming for Don't Look Up and had to pull out of the movie in what he described as a 'heartbreaking' decision.
In the memoir, which is set to be released on 1 November, Perry also opens up about how much money he's spent in his life on his drink and drug addictions - estimating he's spent approximately $9 million.
"I've probably spent $9 million (£7.9 million) or something trying to get sober," he said.
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