Matthew Perry’s Ex Pens Moving Tribute to ‘Complicated’ Relationship
Matthew Perry’s former fiancée looked back on the magic and pain of their “complicated” relationship in a touching Instagram tribute to the late actor, who died on Saturday at the age of 54.
“He would love that the world is talking about how talented he was,” Molly Hurwitz began her Monday post. “And he really was very talented.”
The 32-year-old literary manager’s caption, next to a photo of Perry in silhouette against a snowy city landscape, went on to recall how the pair sat down to rewatch Friends ahead of the reunion special that aired on HBO in May 2021.
“‘Fuck, I was so good!!!...’” she remembered him saying. “‘See what I did there???’”
The two of them rewound and studied the scenes, Hurwitz recalled. “Our respect and appreciation of humor is something that connected us. Being with him as he rediscovered his brilliance was magical.”
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She and Perry began dating in 2018, with the Friends star proposing in Nov. 2020. “I decided to get engaged,” he told People. “Luckily, I happened to be dating the greatest woman on the face of the planet at this time.”
But the pair called it off by June 2021, with Perry saying that he wished Hurwitz the best. “Sometimes things just don’t work out,” he said, “and this is one of them.”
Hurwitz acknowledged the difficulties of their relationship in her Monday post. “I obviously knew that man in a very different way, too,” she wrote. “While I loved him deeper than I could comprehend, he was complicated, and he caused pain like I’d never known.”
For better or for worse, she continued, no one in her adult life had had “a more profound impact on me than Matthew Langford Perry.” She said she had “tremendous gratitude” for everything she’d learned from the relationship.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Al Anon,” Hurwitz added, “an invaluable resource for those who love someone struggling with this destructive disease.”
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Perry was candid about his battle with substance abuse, even making an oblique reference to his alcohol and opioid addictions in the title of his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which chronicled in painstaking detail his decades-long journey to sobriety.
Though he avoids referring to Hurwitz by name, Perry admitted in the book he’d been high on “1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone” when he proposed in 2020. “And she knew it, too,” he wrote. “And she said yes.”
Perry said he’d bought his then-fiancée a ring “because I was desperate that she would leave me. I didn’t want to be this injured and alone during COVID.” In Los Angeles after drying out at a rehab facility in Switzerland, he realized he “was not ready for any of this.”
“You went down on one knee to propose, which really hurt your stomach, remember?” Perry recalled of his inner monologue. He added bluntly, “I didn’t remember—needless to say, we broke up.”
Hurwitz ended her tribute on Monday by briefly and directly addressing Perry. “Matty, I feel relief that you are at peace,” she wrote. “Sincerely, Moll-o-Rama(…fication).”
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