Actor Hank Azaria, best known for voice acting in The Simpsons, took to Instagram to share a heartfelt message about his friend Matthew Perry. Matthew Perry was found dead in his hot tub on Saturday, October 28.
Hank shared that he and the Friends actor were "more like brothers for a long time" and Matthew was the first friend he made when he moved to Los Angeles. At the time, he was 21 and Matthew was 16, he shared. "We drank a lot together. We laughed a lot together. We were there for each other in the early days of our careers," Hank said in the video.
Hank spoke very highly of Matthew, describing him as "the funniest man ever." Matthew was known for being funny while playing Chandler on Friends, but Hank pointed out that he was even funnier in real life.
Speaking of his sense of humor, Hank described Matthew as a "genius." "He would start to weave comedy threads together. Just hanging out. A joke here, a joke there, a joke here, a joke there," Hank described. "Then by the end of the night, he’d weave them all together in this crescendo of hilarity."
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Beyond his sense of humor though, Hank also credited Matthew with helping him get sober. "The night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in. The whole first year I was sober we went to meetings together," he shared. "I got to tell him this — he was just, as a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise and he totally helped me get sober.”
Hank added that he "really loved [Matthew]," and at some point, he felt like he had already lost Matthew due to his addiction to drugs and alcohol. "A lot of us who were close to him felt like we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago because, as he documented in his autobiography, there was so much suffering," Hank said.
Matthew was open about addiction and recovery in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Hank explained that, as someone who really loved Matthew and knew him personally, the memoir was hard to get through.
"I had to pick up and put down that biography like 11 times, it was so painful for me to read," Hank said. "As his friend who loved him, I knew he must be suffering but the details of it were just devastating.”
Hank also shared that he "knew [Matthew] had gone in and out [of recovery] for years" — it was something that he wrote about in his memoir as well. But it was still painful and "heartbreaking" for Hank and other friends of Matthew's.
"We just missed him," Hank explained. "It’s one of the terrible things about this disease: it just takes away the person you love." Hank said that anyone who spent time with Matthew would be laughing by the end of the night. Career-wise, Matthew was also "so brilliant," Hank said.
"I just wish I and the world could’ve gotten what the rest of his career would’ve been," Hank said.
