Megyn Kelly said “Friends” star Matthew Perry, who was found dead in his Los Angeles home Saturday, was victimized by the “double combo” of fame and drugs.
“It’s a very familiar pair,” Kelly, the host of the SiriusXM news talk show “The Megyn Kelly Show,” said during Tuesday’s broadcast.
She added that the comedic actor likely turned to drugs because “people who chase fame have a hole inside of them that is unfillable.”
While autopsy results have yet to be announced, Perry had a well-publicized history of addiction and substance abuse as he earned a fortune portraying Chandler Bing on the top-ranked NBC sitcom.
“You know the amount of damage that he had done to his body over the years,” Kelly said, referencing Perry’s years-long addiction to alcohol and painkillers.
Perry’s body was found in a hot tub at his home, according to unnamed sources cited by the Los Angeles Times and celebrity website TMZ, which was the first to report the news.
Law enforcement sources told TMZ that investigators ran a less in-depth test on the actor that revealed he did not have fentanyl or meth in his system at the time of his death.
Kelly said Perry’s death was a cautionary tale about “chasing fame,” which is “not only not to be done” but is “a red flag warning sign that something’s wrong.”
“I think that you haven’t been taught a certain lesson, you haven’t been given a certain goodness, you need to stop and re-evaluate and try to fill that up right then and there without one iota of fame,” Kelly said, adding that “fame does nothing for you.”
Perry was open about his long and public struggle with addiction, writing at the beginning of his 2022 million-selling memoir: “Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
On Sunday, Perry’s book, which describes how “Friends” castmates including Jennifer Anniston staged an intervention after he arrived on set while intoxicated, was ranked No. 1 on Amazon, supplanting Britney Spears’ memoir.
“I’m so sad he’s gone,” Kelly said, adding: “I feel like he found a way through just the nastiest form of addiction there is.”
