phitola

Matthew Perry had what most people spend their whole lives chasing. The hit show, the money, the house with the pool. He says he loved it for about six months. Then one day he walked into that house and realized none of it had touched the problem he actually had. The part that stays with me is the Craig Bierko story. Bierko turned down the role, watched Friends become a massive hit, and didn’t speak to Perry for two years. When he finally came over to apologize, Perry told him the truth at 24: it doesn’t do what we all thought it would do. Bierko didn’t believe him. Almost nobody does when the warning comes from someone who already has the thing. Success is great at fixing outside problems. It does very little for the inside ones, and it can make them harder to deal with, because now nobody thinks you’re allowed to struggle. This is from November 2022, less than a year before he died. It lands much heavier now.