Actress Valerie Bertinelli responded to Matthew Perry's claim they once made out next to her then husband, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, while he was passed-out drunk.
Bertinelli, who was married to Van Halen between 1981 to 2007, invoked the lyrics to Taylor Swift's latest song "Anti-Hero" to subtly acknowledge her mea culpa in a TikTok video.
"Anti-Hero" is the newest hit from Swift's tenth studio LP, Midnights, which was critically lauded and embraced by Swifties as one of her best albums and deeply personal works to date.
The song became an instant viral hit and spawned a controversial music video. It is a self-deprecating and introspective look at the singer's flaws and about taking ownership of them.
Perry opened up about his crush on the former star of the sitcom, One Day at a Time in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
"I fell madly in love with Valerie Bertinelli, who was clearly in a troubled marriage," he wrote, according to Page Six ahead of the books publication on Thursday.
In one of the book's passages, he divulged that he and Bertinelli had a “long, elaborate make-out session” while her husband, Van Halen–who was "not ten feet away from us"–was passed out after the famed guitarist "enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard."
In response to the conveniently-forgotten memory, Bertinelli posted a video on TikTok using Swift's lyrics from "Anti-Hero" to articulate her embarrassment.
In the TikTok video, she wrote in the overlaid text:
“Anyone misbehave in their 20s and early 30s? Are you mortified?”
She partially lip-synced to Swift's lyrics heard accompanying the clip for her self-own.
“It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.”
She waved to the camera singling out herself and then face-palmed.
Since we've all been there, TikTokers assured her not to sweat it so much after all these years.
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In his memoir, Perry recalled:
"I was over at Valerie and Eddie's house, just hanging out and gazing at Valerie, trying to make her laugh."
"When you made her laugh, you felt ten feet tall."During the stealth lip-locking, Perry remembered thinking:
"Maybe she felt the same way I did."
“I told her I had thought about doing that for a long time, and she had said it right back to me," he wrote.
However, he was gutted the next day when she apparently pretended as if nothing happened between them.
He said he "quicky got the hint" and "played the role I was supposed to."
"But inside I was devastated."
At the time, Bertinelli and Perry were starring together playing siblings in the TV sitcom Sydney, which was canceled after its first season in 1990.
Bertinelli filed for divorce from Van Halen in 2005 after four years of separation.
In her autobiography, she cited her reasoning for the split was due to his cocaine addiction and refusal to give up smoking, which likely led to his throat and lung cancer diagnosis for which he was hospitalized in 2019.
He later died from a stroke on October 6, 2020, at the age of 65.
They had one son together named Wolfgang, whose name is referenced in Bertinelli's TikTok handle.
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