Matthew Perry Pivots From Keanu Reeves Death Wish

UPDATE: Matthew Perry has released a statement clarifying his book comments, saying “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.”

The story as it first appeared is below.

If you ever wondered if Matthew Perry and Keanu Reeves were friends, we hate to be the bearer of bad news—that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, a bizarre excerpt from Perry’s upcoming memoir seemingly suggests the actor wishes the John Wick star was dead. As first reported by Variety, Perry mentions Reeves’ name on two separate occasions when questioning why River Phoenix and Chris Farley had to die.

“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,” Perry writes in his book. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us? River was a better actor than me; I was funnier. But I certainly held my own in our scenes — no small feat, when I look back decades later.”

When discussing the promotional tour for Almost Heroes, Perry adds that he punched a hole in the wall of Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room after finding out Farley had passed.

“His disease had progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share),” the Friends alumnus adds. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us. I had to promote ‘Almost Heroes’ two weeks after he died; I found myself publicly discussing his death from drugs and alcohol. I was high the entire time.”

In the same book, Perry revealed he was once cast in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, but had to drop out after a near-lethal combination of drugs stopped his heart for five minutes.

“I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes,” Perry concludes. “It wasn’t a heart attack — I didn’t flatline — but nothing had been beating. 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?”

The book, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is set for release on November 1st.