Charlie Sheen said he believed fellow actor Matthew Perry “wasn’t sober” while Perry promoted his memoir about addiction and recovery roughly a year before Perry’s death.
Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Sheen said he heard a snippet of Perry’s audiobook and thought the performance lacked the “perfect, specific, laser-focused diction” Perry typically used. "I could tell he wasn’t sober talking about a book that is all about sobriety and recovery," Sheen said, adding that the voice on the tape sounded "handicapped." He said he read Perry’s book in a day and that he felt bad for the actor and wanted to reach out after seeing Perry mention him in the memoir.
Sheen, who is on a press tour for his own memoir and documentary about his long public struggle with addiction, said he did not know Perry well and was unsure whether any outreach could have changed what ultimately happened. "I don't know if I could've affected what ultimately happened," he said. He estimated he read the book three weeks before Perry's death, though the timeline reported by authorities places Perry's death about 11 months after the memoir's release.
Perry, best known for his role on the sitcom Friends, was found dead in his Los Angeles home in October 2023. The Los Angeles County medical examiner determined that ketamine was the primary cause of death. Prosecutors later charged five people in connection with the death, including Perry’s former personal assistant and a woman prosecutors have called a supplier of the drug known in media reports as the "Ketamine Queen." Authorities have said Perry had received ketamine from a regular physician as an off-label treatment for depression.
When Perry released his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in November 2022, he said he was 19 months sober and described years-long struggles with alcohol and prescription drugs. In the book he wrote that he had attended thousands of AA meetings, entered rehab more than a dozen times and gone through numerous detox stays, and that he had spent millions of dollars trying to get sober.
Sheen, 60, has previously spoken publicly about his own addiction history and has written about it in a memoir and a Netflix documentary. In the Morgan interview he said reading Perry's memoir was inspiring and that he was proud of the work, while also expressing frustration over the way Perry referenced him in the book.
Sheen's remarks add to ongoing public discussion about addiction, treatment and the circumstances surrounding Perry's death. Officials and court filings in the case have focused on the source of the ketamine and the role of others in supplying it; legal processes in several of the charged cases are ongoing.
Representatives for Matthew Perry did not respond to requests for comment in the interview excerpt aired by Morgan. Representatives for Sheen and for participants in the legal proceedings tied to Perry’s death have declined to comment beyond court documents and prior public statements.