Family members of late actor Matthew Perry are speaking out on the first anniversary of his death.
“Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie had a conversation with Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, stepdad Keith Morrison, and sisters Emily, Caitlin, and Madeleine Morrison.
“[To light up a room is] something you’re born with or you’re not born with. And he was certainly born with it in spades,” Keith, who is a “Dateline NBC” host, said of Perry.
“But it must be said, I think, that he was also very lonely in his soul,” Perry’s mom Suzanne added. “I’m a very lucky woman, but there was one glitch. There was one problem that I couldn’t conquer,” Suzanne continued. “I couldn’t help him.”
“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself because it tears you up,” the grieving mom said.
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The “Friends” star died on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54. The medical examiner ruled that Perry died from a ketamine overdose. His cause of death was listed as accidental drowning.
“It was always a jubilant thing when he would come over,” Perry’s half-sister Caitlin told Guthrie. “Even when he was struggling in dark times we were always proud of him. We were always proud of the fact that he kept fighting and that he made it a big focus of his life to help other people.”
Emily agreed, saying her half-brother “was grumpy all the time but he was funny all the time.”
“All he ever wanted was to love and to be loved. He struggled so much to feel peace. And I think he got to a place where he did,” she said.
In an exclusive interview with TODAY’s @SavannahGuthrie, Matthew Perry’s mom Suzanne Morrison recounted the tender moments she had with her son before his death.
Watch the full conversation on Monday, October 28 on TODAY. pic.twitter.com/Ce8uPggN9f
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 25, 2024
Perry had gone into detail about his lifelong struggle with addiction in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” The “Friends” star estimated that he had spent about $9 million trying to get sober.
“What he taught the world was that no amount of money will cure an addict. It needs something else. And that’s what we are trying to do,” Keith said, mentioning that he believed Perry was sober prior to his death.
“Although, you know, he was a guy who would make decisions. ‘I can handle this. I can do this. I can tell you what’s right. I know the whole system inside and out. I know what the drug will do to me.’ And so there was that worry of, ‘What is he really doing?’” he said.
Suzanne also talked about Perry’s final days. “He went through a period, interestingly enough just before he died, when he was showing me one of his new houses,” Perry’s mom told Guthrie. “He came up to me and he said, ‘I love you so much and I’m so happy to be with you now.’ It was almost as though it was a premonition or something. I didn’t think about it at the time but I thought, ‘How long has it been since we’ve had a conversation like that? It’s been years.’”
She continued, “I think there was something. There was an inevitability to what was going to happen next to him, and he felt it very strongly. But he said, ‘I’m not frightened anymore.’ And it worried me.”
Five people were arrested in August, including Perry’s assistant, doctors, and Jasveen Sangha, an alleged drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen.” Sangha and Dr. Mark Chavez, who pleaded guilty in exchange for cooperating with the feds, will go on trial in March 2025.
“I’m thrilled,” Perry’s mother said of the trial.
“What I’m hoping, and I think the agencies that got involved in this are hoping, that people who have put themselves in the business of supplying people with the drugs that will kill them are now on notice,” Keith Morrison said. “It doesn’t matter what your professional credentials are, you are going down, baby.”
