The world is still reeling following the death of beloved Friends actor Matthew Perry, who passed away in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home. Perry’s cause of death is unclear; authorities have ruled out a meth or fentanyl overdose. Marta Kauffman, Friends’ co-creator, told TODAY that Perry was sober and ‘in a really good place’. 

Matthew Perry was not gay; he dated several Hollywood stars

Matthew Perry was not gay. Some reports claim that Friends’ creators wrote Chandler Bing, Perry’s character, as gay. However, they changed Chandler’s sexuality after casting Perry. “No, Chandler isn’t gay,” co-creator David Crane told Entertainment Weekly in 1996. “Nor will he be gay. It’s not as if he has a choice. He either is or he isn’t. And he happens not to be.”

Perry opened up about romances and dalliances with several Hollywood stars in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. He revealed that he dated Julia Roberts after she signed up to guest star on Perry’s show. The late actor said he ended the relationship out of the blue. 

“Two months later, I was single,” Perry wrote. “Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable.”

Perry dated actor Lizzy Caplan for six years, his longest relationship. He wrote that he regretted their breakup. “All my fears reared up like a snake,” he scribed. “I often think if I’d asked [her to marry me], now we’d have two kids and a house. Instead, I’m some schmuck who’s alone in his house at fifty-three.”

His last relationship was with literary manager Molly Hurwitz. The pair started dating in 2018, got engaged in November 2020, and split up in June 2021. “Sometimes things don’t work out and this is one of them,” Perry told People. After Perry’s death, Molly recounted their time together via the following Instagram caption:

“While I loved him deeper than I could comprehend, he was complicated, and he caused pain like I’d never known. No one in my adult life has had a more profound impact on me than Matthew Langford Perry. I have tremendous gratitude for that, for everything I learned from our relationship.”