Matthew Perry‘s family is remembering the late Friends star and looking ahead to the criminal trial for two of the people charged in connection with his death.
In an interview that aired on the Today show on Monday, the one year anniversary of Perry’s death at the age of 54 from the acute effects of ketamine, Perry’s mother Suzanne Morrison, his stepfather Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison and three of his sisters — Caitlin, Emily and Madeline Morrison — looked back at Perry’s final days and what they’ll remember about their late family member.
Suzanne recalled feeling, shortly before Perry died, that “there was an inevitability to what was going to happen next to him, and he felt it very strongly.”
“He went through a period, interestingly enough, just before he died when he was showing me one of his new houses,” she said in the sit-down with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie. “He came up to me and he said, ‘I love you so much, and I’m so happy to be with you now. And I’m so…’ 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.”
In the days before he died, Perry told his mother, “I’m not frightened anymore,” she recalled, adding that that “worried” her.
Perry was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home and the actor, who had spoken extensively about his struggles with addiction over the years, had a year before, tied to the release of his memoir, said he was sober and seemed committed to staying clean.
Even after his death, those who knew him said he was still sober.
But in the Monday interview with Today, Keith mused about whether Perry was still sober or had, as prosecutors allege, become addicted to ketamine.
When asked if they thought Perry was still sober and “on his path” when he died, Keith said, “it appeared to us as if he was,” as Suzanne shook her head.
“Not to you?,” he said to her. “It certainly seemed like it to me.”
Keith continued, “Though he had been treated with ketamine, it hadn’t turned into something he couldn’t control. Although 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.’ So there was that worry: What’s he really doing.”
And Perry’s sister Madeline observed, “I don’t even know if in his mind he had relapsed.”
Now, a year after Perry’s death, five people have been indicted and charged in an investigation into what happened to the actor, which unearthed a “broad underground criminal network.”
Three of them have reached plea deals and are cooperating with prosecutors while two of those charged, Dr. Salvador Plasencia and an alleged dealer Jasveen Sangha known as the “Ketamine Queen,” are set to be tried in early 2025.
Suzanne said she was “thrilled” about the charges, and Keith hopes the legal action will have an impact.
“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’ll kill them — they are now on notice,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what your professional credentials are. You’re goin’ down, baby.”
Keith also hopes that Perry’s experience will provide a lesson.
“What he taught the world is that no amount of money will cure an addict. It needs something else,” he said. That’s what we’re trying to do (with the foundation).”
Perry’s family also spoke about the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada, founded in the wake of the actor’s death in his native country, which is separate from the U.S. Matthew Perry Foundation but both organizations have similar intentions.
Perry wrote in his memoir and spoke in the final years of his life about his efforts to help fellow addicts and how he hoped that was how he would be remembered.
“He made it a big focus of his life to help other people, to encourage other people to say, ‘I need help.’ He tried to make people see that that was a brave thing,” Caitlin, who serves as the executive director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada, said.
And Suzanne is making peace with her own limits when it came to helping her son.
“I’m a very lucky woman. But there was one glitch, there was one problem that I couldn’t — I couldn’t conquer it. I couldn’t help him,” she said.
She added, speaking about her support for the foundation, “The one thing I have to learn — [and it’]) very hard to — is you’ve got to stop blaming yourself. Because you don’t understand what your child or what your husband or wife is going through. And you’ve got to stop, because it tears you up.”
Perry’s family spoke about how they will sometimes still talk to him or feel the urge to reach out to him a year after his death.
And his mother said fans continue to visit his grave, leaving letters about the “unbelievable” impact he had on them.
“Whenever I’m there, there will be people coming to see him — still now. Usually that wears off,” she said. “They leave really lovely letters to him. Like, ‘I felt so sad. You helped me get through my teen years.’”
“I’ll maybe release them sometime, so people can see,” she said of the notes. “But they really did love him, because they could relate to him.”