Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

The author portrays his mother as beautiful, charismatic, and intelligent. A former beauty pageant queen, she later becomes press secretary to the Canadian prime minister and a news anchor. As a child, Perry loves his mother and wants to be the center of her focus. However, he feels he must compete for her attention, first with her work, and then with her new husband, Keith Morrison. Consequently, at the age of fifteen, he goes to live with his father. Perry’s conflicted feelings about his mother are reflected in one of the memoir’s themes: The Fear of Abandonment. Describing his romantic relationships with women, the author illustrates his compulsion to replicate the dynamic with his mother. While he works hard initially to get their attention, his fear that they will lose interest eventually prompts him to abruptly abandon them. Perry also attributes his obsessive pursuit of fame to his desire to make his mother proud.

With the help of therapy, Perry comes to a more balanced view of his mother. He recognizes that she was only 21 when she became a single parent and must also have felt abandoned. The author also acknowledges, “I don’t think there’s possibly a way that she could have been proud enough for what I needed” (213). Ultimately, Perry expresses gratitude for his mother’s support, particularly during his struggle with addiction.

John Bennett Perry is the lead singer of the folk group The Serendipity Singers when he meets and marries Perry’s mother. However, when the couple separate, he moves to Los Angeles to become an actor. His departure marks the author’s first and most significant experience of abandonment at only nine months old. Perry begins visiting his father from the age of five, flying from Canada to Los Angeles as an “unaccompanied minor.” However, throughout the author’s childhood, John Bennett Perry remains a largely remote figure, embodied in his TV role as the handsome father of another boy in an Old Spice ad. The young Perry envisions his father as Superman while casting himself as Batman, illustrating both that he idolizes his father and that he sees him as an almost imaginary presence in his life.

When Perry moves to Los Angeles, his father becomes his role model. John Bennett Perry supports his son’s decision to follow him into acting, presenting him with the book Acting with Style. However, when his son becomes a star while he remains a “journeyman” actor, Perry detects a degree of professional envy from his father. The author also notes that, despite teaching him “many good things,” his father also “taught [him] how to drink” (44). As a teenager, Perry absorbs his father’s assertion that his first drink of alcohol in the evening is the day’s highlight. The memoir implies that the “lesson” contributes to Perry’s alcohol addiction. Nevertheless, the author expresses gratitude for his father’s support in later life. On more than one occasion, he is shown moving in with his son to help him through rehabilitation.

When Perry moves to Los Angeles, he becomes friends with Craig Bierko, Hank Azaria, and David Pressman. The actors bond over their similar sense of humor talent, and desire for fame. Bierko, in particular, becomes central to the memoir’s exploration of The Fantasy and the Reality of Fame. Perry describes Bierko as “by far the fastest comic mind I have ever seen” and the most handsome member of the group (71). Consequently, he is initially the most successful in auditions. However, Bierko’s decision to decline the role of Chandler in Friends for another show is a momentous turning point in their fortunes. Perry emphasizes the fickle nature of fate as he becomes famous in the role his friend declined. Meanwhile, the show Bierko chooses over Friends is not a success. For a while, Perry’s lucky break leaves their “friendship in flames” (103). By the time Bierko apologizes, Perry recognizes that fame is not a panacea for life’s problems. Battling addiction, he would willingly trade places with his friend. Bierko, having never experienced Perry’s level of fame, does not believe him. Bierko’s response illustrates Perry’s theory that you “have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams” (104).

Performing in the sitcom Friends is a professional and personal high point for the author. Describing his immediate chemistry with his costars, Perry states, “It was so special it felt like we’d all been together in a previous life” (88). During the filming of the show, the cast becomes “inseparable.” Throughout the memoir, the author expresses his affection for Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courtney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow. Perry describes all his female costars as “beautiful” or “gorgeous” but admits to a crush on Jennifer Aniston. In response, Aniston shows a “deafening lack of interest” (94), but their friendship remains intact.

The author conveys how Friends becomes an ensemble show in the true sense of the word, as the cast share the limelight equally and act in one another’s interests. For example, Perry is astonished at Schwimmer’s “generosity of spirit” when he suggests they should all request the same fee, despite being the cast member best placed to negotiate the highest sum. He also describes incidents where his costars support him through his addiction in different ways. Perry recounts how Matt LeBlanc discreetly nudged him awake during a scene together. Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston stages an intervention, revealing that Perry’s costars know he has a drinking problem.

In Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the author describes his romance with Julia Roberts to illustrate the extent of his fear of abandonment. From the start of their relationship, Perry knows how fortunate he is to date the movie star. As well as praising her beauty, he remarks on Roberts’s intelligence, describing her as “a big intellect” (110). The author’s account of their time together evokes images of a romantic movie, from their courtship conducted by fax to their New Year’s Eve celebrations in the New Mexico snow. His decision to break up with her makes little apparent sense, and it comes as a shock to Roberts. Perry says, “I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face” (120). In the memoir, Perry describes the decision both as a mistake and as part of a long-standing pattern related to The Fear of Abandonment: Afraid that she would discover his failings, he broke up with her before she could break up with him. Several years later, as he sits in a rehabilitation center watching her accept an Oscar for her role in Erin Brockovich, he shouts “I’ll take you back!” (134)—a joke that highlights the foolishness of his actions.

Jamie Tarses plays an important role in the author’s professional and personal life. Tarses is an enormously driven and successful executive—the first woman and one of the youngest people ever to serve as president of a major television network. She was the one who suggested auditioning Perry when the part of Chandler remained unfilled. Later, she worked on several other series Perry appeared in and became romantically involved with the actor. Of the many long-suffering girlfriends in Perry’s memoir, she is the most tirelessly supportive. The author describes her various attempts to help him in crises caused by his addictions, from driving him to two different hospitals on the same day to staying by his bedside every night. Perry repays her devotion by breaking up with her. Throughout his memoir, the author is remorseful about his former ingratitude to girlfriends. However, he expresses particular sorrow over his treatment of Tarses, whom he describes as “the most amazing person I had ever met” (137). Perry’s claim that Tarses “was a messenger from a benevolent God” references her death in 2021 from cardiac complications (128).