Keith Morrison, stepfather of late actor Matthew Perry, spoke about the loss of his stepson and Perry’s final months.
Perry was found dead at his home in October 2023 at age 54 from an accidental overdose linked to ketamine used to treat opioid addiction.
Morrison said the grief of losing Perry never goes away and is constantly with him, especially hard on Perry’s mother who he had reconnected with in his final days.
“As other people have told me hundreds of times, it doesn’t go away,” Morrison said. “It’s with you every day. It’s with you all the time, and there’s some new aspect of it that assaults your brain.”
Morrison described Perry as happy in his final times, though sad he didn’t get to have a “third act” in life.
“It’s not easy. Especially for his mom,” Morrison added. “I don’t think I’m giving away too much if I say that toward the end of his life, they were closer than I had seen them for decades, and texting each other constantly and him sharing things with her that most middle-aged men don’t share with their mothers.”
“He was happy, and he said so. And he hadn’t said that for a long time. So it’s a source of comfort, but also he didn’t get to have his third act, and that’s not fair,” Morrison said.
While the death didn’t surprise Morrison completely, it was still devastating news.
He fondly recalled Perry as a larger-than-life, loud and funny personality despite their contrasting natures.
“It was the news you never want to get, but you think someday you might,” he said.
“In a way our personalities were, as they say, chalk and cheese,” he said. “He was loud and out there and funny and aggressive.”
He added, “He had that kind of very fiery personality. And mine is not like that, as you can imagine. But we got along fine. I never tried to replace his dad, but I was there for him, and he knew it. We were close.”
Morrison acknowledged Perry’s open struggles with substance abuse, though said he sought treatment when needed and understood his addiction was a tough battle.
“He came to understand he’d get to a certain point, and then he knew he had to go and get treatment. And he’d accept help when he needed it,” Morrison said. “But as he said himself, it just kept happening, and it was it was a big bear. It was a tough thing to be — big, terrible thing.”
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