We love blast-from-the-past relationship news (remember when Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt reunited to discuss their relationship from the ’90s?) and another favorite duo are back in the headlines after Matthew Perry opened up about his former relationship with romcom queen Julia Roberts.
The Friends star has been making the rounds promoting his new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing and in the book, he revealed that he was the one to break things off with the superstar.
The pair started dating before Roberts made an appearance on the hit NBC sitcom. Perry had reached out to Roberts to make an appearance on Friends, and the actress reportedly requested that he write her an assay on quantum physics before she signed on to the show, to which the 17 Again actor obliged.
“Not only did Julia agree to do the show,” Perry remembered. “But she also sent me a gift: bagels — lots and lots of bagels. … I did let her in, both figuratively and literally, and a relationship began.”
Roberts starred in the season 2 episode “The One After the Superbowl, Part 2” as Chandler Bing’s (Perry) long lost classmate Susie Moss, who conspires to get back at him for a humiliating her when they were kids.
Roberts told David Letterman in 1996 that on their first date, Roberts was “very nervous because he’s awfully clever and funny and handsome.”
After only two months of dating, Perry was the one to break things off with the actress after it became “too much” for him. “I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me,” he wrote in an excerpt acquired by the Times UK. “Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
Perry explained that he couldn’t “begin to describe the look of confusion on her face” when he ended their romance and that he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was “slumming it” by dating him. (Roberts married her now-husband Daniel Moder in 2022 and share three children together.)
In a resurfaced interview from the time, Perry explained “We saw each other for a time, but basically, that had to end. It’s like the busiest guy in the world trying to go out with the busiest girl in the world.” He continued, “It just didn’t work out, but we are friends and get along really well.”
In his book, Perry opens up about his battle with addition and details his time going to rehab. He told The New York Times he probably spent “$9 million or something trying to get sober.” Today, he says he’s been 18 months sober.
