If you've spent any time on the internet in recent years, you know that actor Keanu Reeves is one of the most universally loved Hollywood stars. There are memes about him and everything!
So when it was revealed this week that actor Matthew Perry chose to drag Reeves in his new memoir by questioning why he "still walks among us" when many of his fellow 90s luminaries died young... well, you can imagine how it went over.
The passages are truly bizarre choices on Perry's part, dripping with petulant jealousy and the seeming suggestion, albeit presumably in jest, that Perry feels Reeves deserves to be dead instead of his colleagues like River Phoenix and Chris Farley.
But when an uproar erupted and Perry decided to apologize in a statement to People magazine, things got even stranger.
Perry told People:
"I'm actually a big fan of Keanu. I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead."
Uh... okay, then. Quick question: Does Perry have a publicist? Because... yikes.
The flap began earlier this week when Perry began promoting his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which delves deep into his Hollywood career, which began when he was just 10 years old in 1979, his time as a star of the legendary sitcom Friends, and his harrowing struggles with addiction.
But the two passages about Reeves are the bits that have stuck out the most to people online. In both, Perry questions why Reeves is still alive when “talented” performers and “original thinkers” like actor River Phoenix and comedian Chris Farley both died young in the 1990s due to drug overdoses.
In one passage, Perry writes:
“River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down."
"Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?"
This passage is particularly distasteful given that River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves were deeply close friends at the time of Phoenix's death.
But in case Perry's view that Reeves doesn't deserve to be here wasn't clear enough, Perry returns to it again in another passage in which he discusses being so angered by Reeves' survival he punched a hole in a wall.
“[Farley's addiction] had progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share)."
"I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us."
Yikes.
Perry's bizarre apology rang insincere to many on social media, and has done little to quell the disgust his passages inspired.
Could this BE any more awkward?
Perry's memoir comes out November 1.
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