Matthew Perry’s cause of death expected to be explained by ‘unknown drug’, medical expert claims
The beloved Friends star’s death remains listed as “pending investigation” after being deemed “inconclusive”.
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Matthew Perry’s tragic death at the age of 54 is expected to be explained by an “unknown drug”, a former medical examiner claims.
Perry, best known for his role as the wisecracking Chandler Bing in the long-running sitcom Friends, was found unresponsive in the jacuzzi at his LA home last month in an apparent drowning.
The beloved star had struggled for decades with drug and alcohol abuse, a battle he detailed in his 2022 memoir.
Perry’s cause of death remains listed as “pending investigation” after being deemed “inconclusive”.
An initial post-mortem showed no signs of meth or fentanyl in his system.
Former chief medical examiner Dr Michael Baden told Fox News Digital that he believes Perry’s cause of death would have been caused by “some unknown drug”, and the full report should be released within days.
He said because of Perry’s fame, the toxicologists may carry out “more extensive tests” than normal.
“They’ve got pretty much 99 per cent of what they’re going to get at this point as far as information goes, and they can release it now, or they can wait for a couple more weeks because they’re looking for some unknown drug,” Dr Baden said.
“They might be doing microscopic slides, but it’s now about almost two weeks, so the toxicology should be finished.”
Perry was laid to rest at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery on November 3.
FRIENDS CAST BREAK SILENCE
Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer have broken their silence over the death of Friends co-star Matthew Perry, joining Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox to pen separate tributes.
“Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face EVERY DAY,” Kudrow wrote on Instagram. “Thank you for your open heart in a six way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of ‘talking.’ Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then, being completely brilliant.
David Schwimmer also shared a tribute to Perry and his “impeccable” comic timing and delivery.
“You could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny it still astonishes,” he wrote.
“And you had heart. Which you were generous with, and shared with us, so we could create a family out of six strangers.”
Kudrow and Schwimmer followed Jennifer Aniston, who earlier posted an emotional tribute on Instagram to Perry, who was found dead in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home late last month.
“Oh boy this one has cut deep … Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before,” she wrote.
“We all experience loss at some point in our lives. Loss of life or loss of love. Being able to really SIT in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA.
“We were always the six of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be,” she continued.
“For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’ he thought he was going to die. His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard. In the last couple weeks, I’ve been pouring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again. I’ll keep them forever and ever.”
“Matty, I love you so much. I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. I talk to you every day … sometimes I can almost hear you saying, ‘Could you BE any crazier?’” she wrote.
“Rest little brother. You always made my day.”
Their posts come one day after Courteney Cox and Matt LeBlanc also spoke publicly about Perry. The iconic US sitcom, which ran from 1994 until 2004 also starred Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer.
Aniston’s character Rachel Green lived across the hallway from Perry’s wisecracking Chandler Bing on the hit show.
Off screen, Perry was honest about his crush on Aniston, who was married to Brad Pitt from 2000 to 2005 and Justin Theroux from 2015 to 2017.
In Perry’s 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the star said that he asked Aniston out before they started working together on Friends.
“Back then I got two jobs in one day — one was Haywire, an America’s Funniest Home Videos-type show and the other was a sitcom. So I called Jennifer and I said, ‘You’re the first person I wanted to tell this to!’” he wrote in the book.
“Looking back, it was clear that this made her think I liked her too much or in the wrong kind of way … and I only compounded the error by then asking her out,” he added.
“She declined (which made it very difficult to actually go out with her), but said that she’d love to be friends with me, and I compounded the compound by blurting, ‘We can’t be friends!’”
But friends they were on the Friends set — so much so that Aniston confronted Perry about his alcohol and drug problems, which grew after he had a jet ski accident in 1997.
Perry recounted how Aniston visiting his trailer made him realise that his addiction wasn’t a secret.
“‘I know you’re drinking,’ she said,” Perry wrote. “I had long since gotten over her — ever since she started dating Brad Pitt, I was fine — and had worked out exactly how long to look at her without it being awkward, but still, to be confronted by Jennifer Aniston was devastating. And I was confused.”
“‘How can you tell?’ I said. I never worked drunk. ‘I’ve been trying to hide it …’” he said.
“‘We can smell it,’ she said, in a kind of weird but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer,” Perry wrote.
“‘I know I’m drinking too much,’ I said, ‘but I don’t exactly know what to do about it.’” he replied.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2004, Aniston grew emotional as she confessed how the cast was not “equipped” to deal with his addiction.
“He struggled,” she explained of Perry.
Perry and Aniston reunited for the 2021 Friends reunion special — six years after Aniston didn’t invite Perry to her 2015 wedding to actor Theroux.
“I wasn’t invited. So what can you do?” Perry said.
Two weeks ago, Perry’s former co-stars remembered him at a funeral service in Los Angeles.
COX, LEBLANC REMEMBER PERRY
Meanwhile, Courteney Cox and Matt LeBlanc have also spoken about the shock death of Perry, who was found dead aged 54 last month in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home.
Cox, who played Perry’s on-screen wife Monica, shared a clip of one of their most famous scenes — when it was revealed that their characters were having a secret affair.
Cox’s clip showed what aired on screen followed by outtakes showing Perry smiling and cracking jokes.
She told her followers how Friends writers had initially planned for the Chandler-Monica affair to be short-lived, but changed their minds when they heard the studio audience’s ecstatic reaction.
“I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day,” she wrote.
“When you work with someone as closely as I did with Matthew, there are thousands of moments I wish I could share. For now here’s one of my favourites.
“To give a little backstory, Chandler and Monica were supposed to have a one night fling in London.
“But because of the audience’s reaction, it became the beginning of their love story.
“In this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say.
“He often did things like that. He was funny and he was kind.
LeBlanc, 56, who played the hapless Joey to Perry’s wisecracking Chandler, also shared an emotional message on his Instagram.
“It is with a heavy heart I say goodbye,” he wrote.
“The times we had together are honestly among the favourite times of my life.
“It was an honour to share the stage with you and to call you my friend.
“I will always smile when I think of you and I’ll never forget you. Never.
“Spread your wings and fly, brother, you’re finally free. Much love.”
The star finished with a joke, saying: “And I guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me”.
Cox and LeBlanc’s posts mark the first individual statement from the cast members of Friends.
The show’s stars — Jennifer Aniston, Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and LeBlanc issued a joint statement in the days after Perry’s death.
DIRECTORS PAY TRIBUTE
It came after Friends director James Burrows shared his memories of Perry with 60 Minutes, and paid tribute to the actor’s skill as he created the Friends character Chandler.
“Matthew had a way of taking a great line and making it extraordinary,” Mr Burrows told presenter Karl Stefanovic.
“He would emphasise words that you would never think of emphasising, plus his body language was extraordinary. You don’t teach that, that comes with the man.”
Mr Burrows said Perry’s death had been particularly shocking considering his recent period of good health.
“Matthew had his problems but he was showing the best side of himself over the past couple of years, so it was unexpected,” he said.
He said Perry’s death had hit him hard.
“I consider the cast a family, so it feels like I’m losing a son,” he said.
PERRY’S EX REVEALS DRUG RELAPSE FEARS
Perry’s ex-girlfriend fears the tragic Friends star suffered a drugs relapse before his death.
Kayti Edwards says the actor’s use of his alter ego “Mattman” in social media posts in the days leading up to the tragedy was a clear sign to her that he could have been high, The Sun reports.
Ms Edwards, 47, dated the Friends star in 2006, worked as his assistant in 2011 and remained close to him.
She told The Sun on Sunday that all the telltale signs of a prescription-pill relapse were there in the lead-up to his death on October 28.
The former model, who is the step-granddaughter of Hollywood star Julie Andrews, claimed the apparent absence of any prescription opioid painkillers does not mean Perry had not taken meds of that kind.
She said: “There are a lot of things that aren’t adding up for me. I don’t believe he just drowned in his jacuzzi, that doesn’t sound right.
“I know Matthew and I know that he wouldn’t have just drowned. I think he might have taken pills in the week leading up to this.
“They said there were no prescription painkillers at the scene, which doesn’t surprise me, because he didn’t leave drugs lying around.
“He was paranoid and would take them all, so there wasn’t any evidence, and then go out for more when he was ready to.”
Perry’s haunting final post, five days before his death, showed him in the jacuzzi and was signed “Mattman”, his alter ego based on his obsession with comic book character Batman.
Ms Edwards said: “That Mattman thing was not something he did when he was sober.
“Mattman would come out when he was not sober and he felt kind of invincible.
“I was around when he was getting high, although I was not getting high with him, and when I would say maybe he should cool it a little bit with the drugs, he would say, ‘No, I’m Mattman’.”
WHAT HAPPENS TO PERRY’S FORTUNE
Perry’s death has left questions remaining about what happens to his estate and the millions he earned annually from the hit sitcom.
Along with the other five main cast members of the smash-hit series — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer — Perry raked in a whopping $30.8 million a year in residuals.
Residuals are paid to performers and directors involved in making TV shows and movies that are syndicated or licensed to streaming media.
Friends ran for ten seasons from 1994 to 2004 and is till a major success decades on.
Perry is believed to have had a net worth of $184 million before he was tragically found unresponsive at his Pacific Palisades home.
Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Tre Lovell told The New York Post that in the case of a death like Perry’s, three things could happen in terms of his massive wealth.
“There may be a trust, and that would be administered privately, through his trustee. He could have had a will — that would be administered under (probate) court supervision,” he said.
“If he had neither, there’s a statutory framework put in place, where there’s a listing of his heirs that would get his estate.”
Mr Lovell said the third option — as Perry had no wife or children and his parents are still alive — would involve splitting his estate between family members.
“They would split his estate. His siblings would be next in line, after the parents. But, since both of his parents are living, they would get it,” he said.
Perry is survived by a large family: his actor father, John Bennett Perry, his mother, Suzanne, his stepfather, Keith Morrison and his five half-siblings.
It came as a close friend of Perry revealed he had been working on a biopic of his life, based on his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
According to good friend Athenna Crosby, who had lunch with Perry the day before he died, the actor already had someone in mind to play a younger version of himself.
“He said that he wanted to make a movie about his life. And he had worked with Zac Efron in the past on a movie, and he said that he wanted Zac Efron to play him as a younger version and that he was gonna ask him soon to do that,” Crosby told Entertainment Tonight.
“He was just looking forward to sharing more about his story and his recovery from addiction, and really championing that cause to help more people, so he was so optimistic and happy about everything that he wanted to do.”
Perry and Efron starred together in 2009 reboot 17 Again, with Efron portraying a 17-year-old version of Perry’s character.
Last year, Perry revealed he had written a romantic comedy in which he also wanted Efron to star. But Efron turned it down.
“I finished a screenplay that we’re out with to some people. I want to direct that. I have a small part in it. I wrote it for myself, and then realised I’m 20 years too old to play this. So we’re trying to cast the leads now,” he told Vanity Fair.
“Well, it was Zac Efron. But he said no. So we’ve got to find somebody who says yes.”
Perry is best known for playing Chandler Bing on popular 90s sitcom Friends, alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. The show ran from 1994 to 2004.
The cast memorably reunited for a reunion special in 2021.
Crosby also revealed that on the day she saw Perry, he was very happy.
“He was doing great. He is a very funny person, as most people know him to be. He’s goofy, he’s silly. He was cracking jokes the whole time,” she said.
“He was speaking to me about some of the upcoming projects that he wanted to work on. He was very optimistic about the future.
“He was talking about how there’s been a public resurgence of interest in him lately and how he was hoping to utilise that to have a second act in his career. He was happy as a clam. So, that’s the person that I spoke to.”
Originally published as Matthew Perry’s cause of death expected to be explained by ‘unknown drug’, medical expert claims
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