NBC “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison spoke candidly about the loss of his stepson, “Friends” actor Matthew Perry, and the months leading up to his shocking death.
Perry was discovered dead in his California home in October 2023 at the age of 54. His death was ruled accidental and linked to ketamine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction.
Morrison has been married to the late actor’s mother, Suzanne, since 1981.
“As other people have told me hundreds of times, it doesn’t go away,” the TV personality said of his grief while speaking during a podcast appearance this week. “It’s with you every day. It’s with you all the time, and there’s some new aspect of it that assaults your brain.”
“It’s not easy. Especially for his mom,” Morrison, 76, added. “I don’t think I’m giving away too much if I say that toward the end of his life, they were closer than I had seen them for decades, and texting each other constantly and him sharing things with her that most middle-aged men don’t share with their mothers.”
The “Dateline” correspondent also described Perry’s overall demeanor leading up to his death.
“He was happy, and he said so. And he hadn’t said that for a long time. So it’s a source of comfort, but also he didn’t get to have his third act, and that’s not fair,” Morrison said.
“It was the news you never want to get, but you think someday you might,” he said when asked if his stepson’s death surprised him. “Yes and no, I guess is the answer to that.”
Morrison also called the “Friends” actor “a larger-than-life person.”
“In a way our personalities were, as they say, chalk and cheese,” he said, per EW. “He was loud and out there and funny and aggressive.”
He continued, “He had that kind of very fiery personality. And mine is not like that, as you can imagine. But we got along fine. I never tried to replace his dad, but I was there for him, and he knew it. We were close.”
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Perry had spoken candidly about his struggles with substance abuse and alcohol addiction, which he detailed in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.”
“He came to understand he’d get to a certain point, and then he knew he had to go and get treatment. And he’d accept help when he needed it,” Morrison said of Perry’s struggles with sobriety. “But as he said himself, it just kept happening, and it was it was a big bear. It was a tough thing to be — big, terrible thing.”