Keith Morrison, the veteran “Dateline” correspondent and stepfather of the late actor Matthew Perry, says in a new interview that the “Friends” star felt he was overcoming his years-long battles with addiction before he was found unresponsive in his hot tub at the end of October in 2003.’
“He felt like he was beating it,” Keith Morrison said that morning. I asked “You never beat it. He knew it.”
Keith Morrison said his grief is still raw. “It’s with you every day. It’s with you all the time, and there’s some new aspect of it that assaults your brain,” he said. “It’s not easy.”
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In an autopsy report released last month, the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said that Perry, who was open about his struggles with alcoholism and substance abuse, died on October 28 at age 54 from “the acute effects” of ketamine. The report also said that drowning, coronary artery disease, and buprenorphine, a synthetic opioid substance, contributed to his death.
“Reportedly clean for 19 months,” the autopsy report added.
Keith Morrison Shares the Weight of Matthew Perry’s Death on ‘Dateline In Memoriam
Matthew Perry was said by sources to be undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to help cope with depression and anxiety, and his last treatment was a week and a half before he died, according to the findings.
Keith Morrison, married to Perry’s mother Suzanne Perry Morrison since 1981, told Kotb during an interview on her TV show that his stepson “didn’t get to have his third act, and that’s not fair.”
Matthew Perry gained fans from multiple generations of TV viewers as the wise-cracking Chandler Bing, who was an accountant. A memoir of his life, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” was published late last year and told about his upbringing in Canada as well as his journey to fame, struggle with addiction and his road to recovery.
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When he passed away, Morrison said the relationship between Perry and his mom– already quite a close one–was not so harmonious for decades. (Perry’s mother, who had been a press secretary for the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, ended her relationship with the man Perry calls his father when he was small.)
They were also “text message machines,” and Perry would “tell her things” that “most 50-year-old men wouldn’t tell their mothers.” He used to say(much later after his mother noticed this habit), “Mom, don‘t tell anybody: But I’m involved with too much gay sex.”
Keith Morrison said Matthew Perry’s presence is still felt in numerous ways. It seems to inhabit his voice, that booming bass that once bellowed, “I am KING OF THE HILL!”
“He was wacky. He was funny. He was acidly satirical,” said Morrison. “But even though he didn’t say a word, he was the center of attention.”
Keith Morrison said that in terms of the two men’s personalities, “we were as you might expect, just chalk and cheese. He was public and loud and funny, and brash to boot.”
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He remembered taking his little son to hockey matches on Saturday mornings, residents recall. “If he didn’t put in all the goals,” Perry was so upset “all the way home and nobody dared speak to him; he wouldn’t talk to anyone.” If Perry missed a shot in tennis, he acted in much the same fashion.
“He had that fiery character, and I don’t have that at all,” said Keith Morrison. “But we got along really well. … I never tried to take the place of his father … but I was there for him, and he knew it.” (Perry’s body father is the character actor John Bennett Perry who has appeared in numerous films and TV shows(e rule 2015).)
Keith Morrison said he had done what he could to support Perry over the years.
“A whirlwind life like that really got him hooked up with a program that was enormously successful. Yet, how he needed help: to be fighting off such virulent addiction, and it was coming up after him so hard,” Keith Morrison said.From time to time on Tuesday that Perry would reach “a certain point” when he knew that he needed treatment, “Get help when you need it.”“But as he said, when it kept happening . . . it was a great big bear,” Keith Morrison said. “It was a tough thing … [a] big horrendous thing.”
