Matthew Perry and Keanu Reeves. Shutterstock (2)
Could he be more regretful? Matthew Perry admitted that he shouldn’t have dropped Keanu Reeves‘ name in his November 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
“I said a stupid thing. It was a mean thing to do,” Perry, 53, said at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 22. “I pulled his name because I live on the same street. I’ve apologized publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”
The Friends alum said that he hasn’t personally apologized to the John Wick star, 58, yet. “If I run into the guy, I’ll apologize. It was just stupid,” Perry added via Variety.
The Massachusetts native seemingly threw shade at Reeves while discussing the deaths of actors River Phoenix and Chris Farley.
“River was a beautiful man inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” he questioned in one passage.
Perry again brought up the Matrix star when he wrote about Farley’s December 1997 death. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out [about Farley’s death]. Keanu Reeves walks among us,” the 17 Again star wrote.
As the excerpts made headlines, Perry apologized for using Reeves as an example. “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu. I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead,” Perry said in a statement in November.
Reeves did not publicly respond to being named in Perry’s memoir. However, an insider exclusively told Us Weekly that he wasn’t expecting to be in the book at all.
“Keanu thought the comments came out of left field,” the insider shared with Us at the time. “It’s kind of backfired on Matthew anyway, which is why he had to apologize.”
Perry’s book largely focused on his battle with drug and alcohol addiction. After spending “upward of $7 million trying to get sober,” the Whole Nine Yards star said he is clean. “I have been to six thousand AA meetings. (Not an exaggeration, more an educated guess.) I’ve been to rehab fifteen times,” he revealed in his memoir. “I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door.”
