An ex-girlfriend and former assistant of “Friends” co-star Matthew Perry said she had doubt about his sobriety on the night he died.
Kayti Edwards said a social media post shortly before his tragic death on October 28 contained what The U.S. Sun, in an exclusive interview with the former model, called “red flags” that pointed at a possible relapse.
Perry, 54, was found in the Jacuzzi at his home in Los Angeles in what has been assumed to have been a drowning.
And despite the fact that initial testing showed no drugs in his system and none were apparently found in his home, Edwards told the Sun that she had her suspicions.
It was Perry’s use of “Mattman” in an Instagram post five days before his death that Edwards said tipped her off to the possibility that Perry, who had famously battled various addictions throughout his career, was using drugs again.
“That Mattman thing was not something he did when he was sober,” Edwards told the Sun. “Mattman would come out when he was not sober and he felt kind of invincible.
“I was around when he was getting high, although I was not getting high with him, and when I would say maybe he should cool it a little bit with the drugs, he would say, ‘No, I’m Mattman,’” she explained.
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An unnamed friend who met with Perry the day before his untimely death told the Sun that the actor seemed “100 per cent sober” and “extremely positive,” but Edwards still questioned the circumstances of his death.
“I don’t believe he just drowned in his Jacuzzi, that doesn’t sound right,” she said. “I know Matthew and I know that he wouldn’t have just drowned.”
Edwards dated Perry for a few months in 2006 and worked as his assistant, apparently for less than a year during an unspecified portion of 2011, but the Sun said the two had “remained close.”
Perry died alone in the Jacuzzi when his current assistant left to run errands, which Edwards said provided two more clues that Perry might have relapsed.
“When he got high, he was always alone,” she said — and he also wanted to be “in the pool or the Jacuzzi.”
“One time, his neighbor in Hollywood Hills found Matthew naked and high in his swimming pool,” she told the Sun. “I had to go over there and get him out of his neighbor’s pool.
“He had a thing with water when he was doing drugs. He always wanted to be in the pool or the Jacuzzi,” she added.
Edwards also claimed that the lack of evidence of drug use at the scene was actually evidence that Perry had relapsed.
“They said there were no prescription painkillers at the scene, which doesn’t surprise me, because he didn’t leave drugs lying around,” she said. “He was paranoid and would take them all, so there wasn’t any evidence, and then go out for more when he was ready to.”
Perry’s official cause of death has not yet been established, pending the results of additional tests, according to the Sun.
