Matthew Perry’s ex-fiancée recalled the magic and pain of their “complicated” relationship in a touching Instagram tribute to the late actor, who died on Saturday at the age of 54.
“He would love for the world to talk about how talented he was,” Molly Hurwitz began her Monday post. “And he really was very talented.”
The legend of the 32-year-old literary director, next to a photo of Perry in silhouette against a snowy city landscape, recalled how the couple sat down to watch again Friends ahead of the reunion special that aired on HBO in May 2021.
“’Fuck, I was so good!!!…’” she recalled him saying. “‘See what I did there???'”
The two rewinded and studied the scenes, Hurwitz recalled. “Our respect and appreciation for humor is something that connects us. Being with him as I rediscovered the brilliance of him was magical.”
She and Perry began dating in 2018, with the Friends star proposing in November 2020. “I decided to get engaged,” he said People. “Luckily, he was dating the greatest woman on the face of the planet at the time.”
But the couple called it off in June 2021, and Perry said he wished Hurwitz the best. “Sometimes things just don’t work out,” she said, “and this is one of them.”
Hurwitz acknowledged the difficulties of their relationship in her post on Monday. “Obviously I also met that man in a very different way,” he wrote. “Although he loved him more deeply than he could understand, he was complicated and caused pain like he had never felt before.”
For better or worse, he continued, no one in his adult life had had “a more profound impact on me than Matthew Langford Perry.” He said he felt “tremendous gratitude” for everything he had learned from the relationship.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Al Anon,” Hurwitz added, “an invaluable resource for those who love someone fighting this destructive disease.”
Perry was candid about his battle with substance abuse, even making an oblique reference to his alcohol and opioid addictions in the title of his memoir. Friends, lovers and the great terrible thingwhich chronicles in painstaking detail his decades-long journey toward sobriety.
Although he avoids referring to Hurwitz by name, Perry admitted in the book that he had been high on “1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone” when he proposed to her in 2020. “And she knew it too,” he wrote. “And she said yes.”
Perry said he had bought his then-fiancée a ring “because I was desperate that she would leave me. He didn’t want to be so hurt and alone during COVID.” In Los Angeles, after drying out at a rehab center in Switzerland, he realized that he “wasn’t ready for any of this.”
“You got down on one knee to propose, which really made your stomach hurt, remember?” Perry remembered her inner monologue. And she added bluntly: “I didn’t remember; needless to say, we broke up.”
Hurwitz ended his tribute Monday by addressing Perry briefly and directly. “Matty, I’m relieved you’re at peace,” he wrote. “Sincerely, Moll-o-Rama(…fication).”
