Hank Azaria says ‘caring’ Matthew Perry helped get him sober: He brought me to first AA meeting
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Actor Hank Azaria paid tribute to his good friend Matthew Perry Sunday, calling the late actor “the funniest man ever.”
Taking to X (formerly Twitter) Azaria, 59, recalled how he and Perry, who was found dead at his California home on Saturday, would often spend many nights drinking and laughing together.
“Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles, when I moved there. I was 21, he was 16,” Azaria began in his lengthy tribute, adding that the pair met while filming a TV pilot for a show called “Morning Maggie.”
“Matthew and I became really good friends,” Azaria continued. “And we were really more like brothers for a long time. We drank a lot together, we laughed a lot together, we were there for each other in the early days of our career.”
According to “The Birdcage” star, Perry’s comedic chops not only served him well on “Friends” and all his other projects, but also in the real world.
“As funny as he was on ‘Friends’ — and he was — and other things too. He was just the funniest man ever. He lived to laugh,” he noted.
Azaria and Perry reunited several times during the sitcom’s 10-year run as the actor would often guest star as Phoebe Buffay’s (Lisa Kudrow) on-and-off-again scientist boyfriend David. He made his final appearance in Season 7.
“He was like a genius,” the “Simpsons” actor praised. “He would start to weave comedy threads. A joke here, a joke there, a joke here and then by the end of the night, he would weave them together in this like crescendo of hilarity.”
Azaria also recalled the actor’s very public battle with 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,” Azaria said, referring to Perry’s 2022 bombshell memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”
“I had to pick up and put down that biography, like, 11 times, it was so painful for me to read,” Azaria said.
“It was really — as his friend who loved him — I knew he must be suffering, but the details of it were just devastating,” Azaria added, noting it was “physically, emotionally mentally and psychologically” devastating.
Reflecting on his own battle with alcoholism, the “Pretty Woman” star revealed that it was Perry who first brought him to an alcoholics anonymous meeting.
“I’m a sober guy for 17 years I want to say that the night I went into a Matthew brought me in the whole first year I was sober. We went to meetings together,” the “Night at the Museum” star said. “As a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise and he totally helped me get sober.”
Azaria wished Perry had found it in himself to “stay in the sober life more consistently.”
“But it’s heartbreaking for those of us who loved him and knew him really well personally, we just missed him,” Azaria continued. “It’s one of the terrible things about this disease, is it just takes away the person you love.”
” I just wish we — I and the world — could have gotten what the rest of his career would’ve been,” Azaria concluded.
Azaria is one of many stars to mourn the “Whole Nine Yards” star’s passing.
Perry’s former flame Gwyneth Paltrow released a statement via Instagram, saying that she was “super sad” about his death.
“I met Matthew Perry in 1993 at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts,” Paltrow, 51, wrote underneath a throwback photo of her and Perry on Sunday. “We were both there for most of the summer doing plays. He was so funny and so sweet and so much fun to be with.”
“We drove out to swim in creeks, had beers in the local college bar, kissed in a field of long grass,” the “Shakespeare in Love” actress continued. “[It was a] magical summer.”
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