Read all about it! Matthew Perry, Jennette McCurdy and more stars didn’t hold back in their debut memoirs this year.
The Friends alum released Friends, Lovers & The Big Terrible Thing in November, chronicling his life’s highs and lows from his experience on the beloved sitcom, his past high-profile relationships and a battle with addiction. Perry opened up about his sobriety journey, which led to multiple rehab stays through the years.
“People would be surprised to know that I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote in the book. “Save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps over the years. When these mishaps occur, if you want to be sober, which I always did, you’d be given drugs to help you along. What drug may you ask? You guessed it: phenobarbital!”
While Perry played the sarcastic Chandler Bing throughout Friends‘ 10 seasons, he admittedly struggled behind the scenes.
“At the time I should have been the toast of the town,” the 17 Again star recalled to Diane Sawyer during an October tell-all interview, noting he would take “55 Vicodin” pills each day. “I was in a dark room meeting nothing but drug dealers and completely alone. … [My costar Jennifer Aniston] was the one that reached out the most. I’m really grateful to her for that.”
Perry’s former costars, for their part, are equally proud of their longtime pal sharing his truth in Friends, Lovers & The Big Terrible Thing. “[They’re] all very supportive and proud of him to be coming clean and giving himself closure in so many areas,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly upon publication. “There was a wariness in the build-up to the release for sure, that he may have spilled a lot more embarrassing secrets than he did.”
Earlier in the year, McCurdy made headlines with her own memoir, which is titled I’m Glad My Mom Died.
“I wanted something that was bold and also something that I meant sincerely. I would never use a bold and attention-grabbing title if it weren’t authentic,” the iCarly alum told The Hollywood Reporter in August of naming her book after her tumultuous relationship with her late mother, who died in 2013. “I would never do it if it were just coming from a flippant place. That’s not my approach to humor. I knew that anybody who had experienced parental abuse would understand the title, and anybody who had a sense of humor would understand the title.”
In the book, McCurdy detailed her difficult relationship with her mom, who allegedly forced her daughter to start acting.
“You can’t quit! This was our chance! This was ouuuuur chaaaaance!” the Sam & Cat alum wrote at the time, referring to her mother’s reaction to McCurdy wanting to give up acting before landing the role of Sam Puckett on iCarly. “She bangs on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn. Mascara trickles down her cheeks. She’s hysterical, like I was in the Hollywood Homicide audition. Her hysteria frightens me and demands to be taken care of.”
Scroll below for a look back at the best celebrity memoirs of 2022: