Matthew Perry's greatest appearance wasn't on Friends.
He was a newly sober good guy who just wanted to help others get clean.
According to claims revealed exclusively to the Mail by Alison Boshoff, the real Matthew Perry was a monster.
According to sources, he violently attacked women in the later years of his life. He was over 50 years old and cheated on his then fiancée Molly Hurwitz with young women – one of whom was only 19 – whom he had met on the exclusive dating app Raya.
He was capable of great cruelty and at the same time was considered a model of virtue.
He sold a pack of lies to the world, but especially to other struggling addicts.
Here Perry described his “best friend,” his assistant of ten years and no-nonsense companion, whom he pseudonymously called “Erin” in his best-selling memoirs: “the nicest person in the world.”
Matthew Perry's greatest appearance wasn't on Friends. He was a newly sober good guy who just wanted to help others get clean.
According to claims revealed exclusively to the Mail by Alison Boshoff, the real Matthew Perry was a monster. According to sources, he violently attacked women in the later years of his life. He was over 50 years old and cheated on his then fiancée Molly Hurwitz (pictured) with young women he met on the exclusive dating app Raya.
He was capable of great cruelty and at the same time was considered a model of virtue. He sold a pack of lies to the world, but especially to other struggling addicts. (Pictured: Perry with his sober companion Morgan Moses, whom he attacked).
He wrote that “Erin” was at his bedside every night for five months while he was at his worst, recovering from colon surgery and going home with a colostomy bag: “She became my best friend…” [she] “I would get to know my problems better than any doctor I’ve ever seen.”
“Erin,” Boshoff also revealed, was Morgan Moses, who quit working for Perry in 2021 after he allegedly pushed her against a wall and threw her “on a bed.”
Moses then broke off all contact with Perry. No wonder why.
A younger woman, a subordinate, forced onto a bed by her older, wealthy, famous, powerful and well-protected boss – in my opinion the implications are clear.
In June of this year, Perry also allegedly threw a coffee table at his ex-fiancée Molly Hurwitz after she dared to break up with him.
She had caught him texting much younger women on dating apps and even buying a Valentine's Day gift for one of them.
'He said [Molly] She was crazy,” a source said. “He hated that she dumped him.”
How will Hollywood remember Perry now? With awards season underway, one wonders: Will Perry get the halo treatment included in the Oscars' “In Memoriam” segment?
Or will we have an honest accounting of who Perry was, the lies he told, his allegedly abhorrent treatment of women — without using his addiction as an excuse?
Without insisting that he was something, as it now seems, wasn't he?
In hindsight, it makes sense why the surviving “Friends” cast didn't take to Instagram alone, but waited until two days after Perry's death to release a confidential joint statement.
Perry's legacy isn't just Perry's. It's also part of “Friends,” the last wholesome sitcom of the '90s monoculture that may never be seen the same way again.
Morgan Moses quit working for Perry in 2021 after he allegedly pushed her against a wall and threw her “onto a bed.” Moses then broke off all contact with Perry. No wonder why. A younger woman, a subordinate, forced onto a bed by her older, wealthy, famous, powerful and well-protected boss – in my opinion the implications are clear.
How will Hollywood remember Perry now? With awards season underway, one wonders: Will Perry get the halo treatment included in the Oscars' “In Memoriam” segment? Or will we have an honest accounting of who Perry was?
Here was Perry to Diane Sawyer, speaking in a soft-focus prime-time interview last year about appearing on “Friends,” despite his crippling addiction throughout its 10-year run: “I'd show up blind, hungover.” “Like shaking and crazy cat”.
According to Perry, in 1998 he was taking 55 Vicodin a day on top of drinking, smoking and everything else he did.
Imagine what a disruption he must have been on set. Imagine the chaos he caused, the late filming, the sheer disrespect towards the cast and crew.
It wouldn't have been hard to exclude Perry from Friends for a while. It wouldn't have been hard to tell him to take a year off, go to rehab and get himself together – especially in a pre-TMZ era when the scandal was easier to contain.
But “Friends,” as an ensemble, made too much money for too many people.
At the series' reunion, which aired in 2021, Perry cut a sad figure – clearly different from the other five cast members. This all makes sense now.
In the introduction to Perry's memoir, his co-star Lisa Kudrow wrote that the question she was asked most often was, “How's Matthew Perry?”
It was a question, she wrote, to which she never really knew the answer.
Perry's book was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost a year and rose again after his death.
How should we view his book now?
A book that he dedicated to all his “fellow sufferers”. For a book he promoted while claiming to be 18 months sober, which included his appearance at the Friends reunion – although sources have since told the Mail that Perry has “never been clean.” That he actually had a harem of young women who came to his house and delivered him drugs, often Oxycontin.
How will active addicts and those in recovery view Perry's lies as anything other than a betrayal?
Perry isn't the first to pull off an addiction memoir. In 2003, author James Frey published A Million Little Pieces, which spent 15 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and became an Oprah's Book Club favorite.
And then the website The Smoking Gun revealed that much of the book was fictional. Frey was forced to return to Oprah and essentially commit seppuku. Readers were offered refunds and future editions were published with a disclaimer.
Perry's book should now be reissued with at least a similar reader warning.
At the “Friends” reunion (pictured), which aired in 2021, Perry cut a sad figure – clearly different from the other five cast members. This all makes sense now.
As for the legacy he so desperately wanted, well, it's all but destroyed.
Sources told US Weekly on Wednesday that Perry has “had to pay a lot of women for therapy” because he is under his spell.
A nurse who worked with him was so traumatized that she quit the profession altogether, the magazine reports. His temper tantrums were constant: he threw objects, turned over tables, and punched walls.
A source claims he then tried to downplay the violence by saying: “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have.”
They also say that an ex-girlfriend in her early 20s threatened to sue Perry in 2020 for emotional and psychological abuse and that he got her addicted to opioids. Perry is said to have reached an agreement with her and made her sign an NDA.
There are probably other women out there who have similar stories to tell.
Matthew Perry was not a “friend” until the end, but unfortunately a fraud.
The lies he told were bigger than the ones he told himself, and he left real wreckage behind him – on those who loved him, on those he is said to have physically and emotionally harmed, and on the addicts who lived in saw their own potential in him.
There is no Hollywood ending here.