Internet Confused After Matthew Perry Appears To Wish Keanu Reeves Was Dead
The internet has made it very clear that after cats, the next thing you don't mess with is Keanu Reeves.
Former Friends actor Matthew Perry appears to be learning this lesson the hard way after Variety reported that in Perry's memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he recalls two instances in which he wished Keanu Reeves had died over actors like River Phoenix, Heath Ledger and Chris Farley.
Perry has struggled with drug addiction throughout much of his career, and in his memoir, he discusses instances of other actors who died due to substances with seemingly random potshots at Reeves. Discussing River Phoenix, he wrote:
“River was a beautiful man, inside and out -- too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us? River was a better actor than me; I was funnier. But I certainly held my own in our scenes -- no small feat, when I look back decades later.”
Writing of Chris Farley, Perry said:
“His disease had progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share),” Perry writes. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us. I had to promote ‘Almost Heroes’ two weeks after he died; I found myself publicly discussing his death from drugs and alcohol. I was high the entire time.”
It seems Perry is no fan of the John Wick actor's ability, though it is unclear if Perry expands upon why he seemingly wished Reeves had died instead of other actors.
As Keanu Reeves is essentially sacred in the eyes of social media at large, Perry's comments were tweeted as blasphemy by many Twitter users.
At least one commenter gave Perry the benefit of the doubt by noting that his shots at Keanu were his feelings in the '90s, a time well before Reeves became the new epic bacon.
Nevertheless, many noted that regardless of the context, Perry's jabs at Reeves were a poor look and a particularly bad way to sell a memoir, leading to hypotheses that Perry's editors simply didn't read Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing close enough to see if the memoir's author would inadvertently unleash the internet's hounds against him.
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Neoontime
Is this just so he can add some interesting drama to sell in his book, cause that is PATHETIC.
Šaja_Manijak
Oh an actor who abused substances wrote some edgy shit about a , at the time, bad actor. How will the world recover ??
PhasmaFelis
BREAKING NEWS: An actor admits that, 20 years ago, he didn't think much of a different actor. More as this crisis unfolds
ObadiahtheSlim
He's not a very good actor with very limited range and often quite wooden performances.
That said, he's (by all accounts) an upright guy and wishing harm upon him is uncalled for.
Lonefirebearer
I just got to wonder… What the fuck did Johnny Silverhand do to make Benny that mad?
ExcessiveKnife
Apparently the guy who drove his career into the wall with drugs and turned in that god-awful performance as Benny in Fallout: New Vegas doesn't think Keanu is a real artist. It's basically the equivalent of all the people who said "hey God, we'll give you Bieber if you give us [recently deceased musician] back", only instead of picking on a guy who isn't universally liked, he's taking a swat at the internet's golden boy.
Unless there's some kind of huge revelation in this book, I doubt Keanu did anything to earn this ire other than saying "Woah!" too many times in the 90's.
Lonefirebearer
Huh… That seems very petty, but makes sense.
Also apparently there's mods to replace Benny's VA? I'm just going to have more fun stuffing explosives down his pants and his bodyguards just go; "Huh, what happened to Benny?"
Victreebong
I’m going to wait and see what really develops out of this. It may be temporal, it may be something between both actors we don’t know about, it may be an exaggeration, I’m going to be open minded to Matt’s explanation. I have a throbbing boner for Keanu, but I also like Matthew Perry a lot. I was upset when he didn’t return to the acting world in Don’t Look Up last year.