- The beloved Friends actor tragically passed away in late October at the age of 54
- His heartbroken stepfather said the grief of Perry's death accompanies him every day
Matthew Perry's stepfather, Keith Morrison, said the actor's death was an “assault on his brain” that stayed with him “every day”.
The beloved Friends actor tragically died in late October at the age of 54 after he was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home due to a ketamine overdose.
Perry's mother married the Dateline reporter in 1981, and he credited his stepfather with bringing his family together after his parents divorced.
Morrison said today Hoda Kotb: “This is what others have told me hundreds of times. Don't go away just yet.
'She is with you every day. He is with you all the time. There's a new side of it attacking your brain, and it's not easy.
“It's (not) easy, especially for his mother,” Morrison told Kotb. “I don't think I'm giving away too much if I say that at the end of his life, they were closer than I've seen them in decades, constantly texting each other and sharing things with her in middle age. Men don't share Their mothers.
Matthew's father, an actor, model, and musician, “abandoned” him and his mother before his fifth birthday, leaving them to move to Los Angeles and focus on his career.
His mother, Susan Berry, a former beauty pageant queen and journalist who later became the Canadian Prime Minister's press secretary, was intensely focused on her career, which meant that Matthew often desperately craved her “attention.”
Although he had a very close relationship with his parents as an adult, the star has been very honest about how he struggled to deal with his parents' divorce and how it left him feeling “on the outside” after his mother remarried and welcomed his half-siblings.
Perry battled addiction at the height of his fame, but credited the ability of his “beautiful” parents and siblings to “never turn their backs on him” with helping him get through his darkest days.
“He was always the center of attention everywhere he went, that kind of character,” Morrison said. He was an idiot. It was funny. It was sour.
But even if he didn't say a single word, he was the center of attention. Yes, that's gone, but you still feel its echo everywhere here.
“I would take him to hockey games on Saturday mornings, and he would always score all the goals. If he didn't score all the goals, he would be so angry all the way home and wouldn't talk to anyone. He was really mad.
“You would take him to a tennis match, and he was a very good tennis player, but if he missed a shot a few times, his racket would be on the ground, and he would step on it and try to break it (his racket) into pieces. He was so crazy,” the Dateline journalist said.
“And so he had this kind of very fiery personality.” And I'm not, as you can imagine. But we got along well. I never tried to take his father's place, but I was there for him, and he knew it. “We were close.”
Morrison took to X to urge people to donate to Matthew Perry's foundation in a touching post following his tragic death.
“This isn't something I usually do, this tune,” he wrote. “But this year is different. Do what you can; he would be grateful.”
The late actor's loved ones established the Matthew Perry Foundation just days after his death.
The charity's purpose is to help others struggling with addiction, by “defining addiction as a disease, tackling the complex stigmas that prevent individuals from seeking and accessing care, and strongly advocating for better and more equitable treatment.”
“It's a whirlwind of a life to be involved in a program that has become so successful as it has been to battle an addiction that was so insidious, that dogged him so hard, and so much he succumbed to,” Morrison said.
“He knew he was going to get to a certain point, and then he knew he had to go and get treatment. He would accept help when he needed it. But as he said himself, it kept happening, and it was a big teddy bear. It was a tough thing, it was a big, terrible thing.”
Perry left more than $1 million to a fund he established after famous movie character Woody Allen.
According to legal documents obtained by DailyMail.com, the late Friends star created a will in 2009 saying he wanted to leave “the majority of his assets to a trust.”
He created the trust, which he called the Alvy Singer Living Trust — named after Allen's 1977 character Annie Hall.
The documents list the value of the star's personal assets as “just over $1 million” — and that money is what his executors found to be additional assets not already in his private trust.
Perry's fortune is estimated at $120 million. The star, who died without ever having children, made clear in his will that any children he might have after 2009 were not “expressly entitled” to his fortune.
Lisa Ferguson and Mike Myers' ex-wife, Robin Roseanne, are listed as co-executors of the will, as both Perry and Roseanne worked on the game show Celebrity Liar in the 2000s.
Other beneficiaries of the trust listed are the star's father John Perry, mother Suzanne Morrison, half-sister Caitlin Morrison and ex Rachel Dunne.
Perry dated Dunne from 2003 to 2005. He signed the will on October 26, 2009.
Actor Chandler Bing – who starred on Friends from 1994 to 2004 – makes $20 million a year from the show's spinoffs.
Perry's parents will likely handle acting royalties as well as other parts of his estate that include his 2022 memoir, according to Day Pitney Trusts and Estates partner Tasha Dickinson.
“Communicator. Music aficionado. Certified bacon trailblazer. Travel advocate. Subtly charming social media fanatic.”
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