Matthew Perry Recalls Exiting Don’t Look Up After Heart Failure

Matthew Perry is looking back on the medical scare that changed the course of his personal and professional life.
 
In his forthcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the actor—who has recently shared details of his addiction battle—revealed he landed a role in Adam McKay‘s star-studded 2021 Netflix film, Don’t Look Up. According to Rolling Stone, the Friends alum shared that amid filming, he spent time at a rehab center in Switzerland.
 
While there, the actor said that he lied to his doctors about the severity of his stomach pain in order to obtain the drug hydrocodone. In order to help with his pain, Perry explained that doctors decided he would have to undergo surgery, during which, he was administered the anesthesia drug propofol. And since the actor took hydrocodone the night before, it was a combination that stopped his heart.

“I was given the shot at 11:00 a.m.,” Perry wrote, per the publication. “I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn’t a heart attack—I didn’t flatline—but nothing had been beating.”