Matthew Perry left 'Don't Look Up' after his heart stopped beating for five minutes.
Matthew Perry was supposed to have a role in “Don’t Look Up” — but exited the movie’s cast after a medical scare.
The actor was in surgery when his heart stopped for five minutes, according to Rolling Stone’s Tuesday excerpt from his memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”
The “Friends” alum, 53, wrote that while he did film a scene with Jonah Hill as a Republican journalist, he did not return to set. Instead, Perry stayed at a rehab center in Switzerland.
Perry explained that he was undergoing surgery to have a “weird medical device” put in his back after lying to his doctors about having severe stomach pain in order to get a hydrocodone prescription.
Because the “Odd Couple” alum took the opioid the night before, the hydrocodone combined with the anesthesia drug propofol that was used during the procedure.
“I was given the shot at eleven a.m.,” Perry wrote. “I woke up 11 hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes.”
The Golden Globe nominee clarified that he didn’t have a heart attack.
“I didn’t flatline — but nothing had been beating,” he recalled. “I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn’t want the guy from ‘Friends’ dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest.
“If I hadn’t been on ‘Friends,’ would he have stopped at three minutes?” Perry continued. “Did ‘Friends’ save my life again?”
The “Mr. Sunshine” alum noted that the man “may have saved [his] life” but did break eight of his ribs in the process.
Perry was in too much pain to return to the “Don’t Look Up” set, which he called “heartbreaking.”
The one scene that the Emmy nominee was in did not make it into the final cut of the movie, which came out in December 2021 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
Perry has been open about his addiction struggles ahead of his book’s Nov. 1 release, telling the New York Times on Sunday that he estimates he has spent $9 million on his sobriety journey.
Having a colostomy bag to collect his feces after his colon burst helped Perry get sober, he told People on Thursday.
“It was pretty hellish having one because they break all the time,” the “Go On” alum added. “My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking OxyContin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life.'”
