Matthew Perry’s upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, has already garnered a lot of pre-publication press for the harrowing tales Perry shares about his struggle with addiction and a near-death experience in 2018. But the book also boasts some juicy Hollywood anecdotes — like the time Perry made out with Valerie Bertinelli in front of her then-husband Eddie Van Halen (though it doesn’t seem like he was, uh, conscious enough to see it).
Four years before he was cast on Friends, Perry starred alongside Bertinelli on the short-lived sitcom Sydney (Bertinelli played the titular private eye, while Perry played her over-protective cop brother). Like so many in that era, Perry was head-over-heels for Bertinelli, tending to a heavy crush for someone he admits was not only “way out of my league” but also “married to one of the most famous rock stars on the planet, Eddie Van Halen.”
Perry insists his feelings for Bertinelli were so real that he “harbored elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me.” That, obviously, didn’t happen, but Perry says he got as close as he could one night while hanging at Bertinelli and Van Halen’s place.
“As the night progressed, it was clear that Eddie had enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard, one more time, and eventually he just passed out, not ten feet away from us, but still,” Perry writes. “This was my chance! If you think I didn’t actually have a chance in hell, you’d be wrong, dear reader — Valerie and I had a long, elaborate make-out session… I told her I had thought about doing that for a long time, and she had said it right back to me.” (A rep for Bertinelli did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
The thrill, however, was quickly gone. Perry says Bertinelli “made no mention” of the make-out the next day and was “behaving — as she should have been — like this was just a normal day.” While Perry says he “got the hint,” he was “devastated” inside and endured “many a tearful night” afterward. Relief finally came when Sydney was canceled, and he no longer had to see Bertinelli.
To put the perfect bow on this anecdote, Perry brought in a bit of Sigmund Freud, tying his unrequited crush to his issues with — you guessed it — his mother. “I have spent my life being attracted to unavailable women,” Perry writes. “It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out that this had something to do with my relationship with my mother.”