John Mulaney 'Really Identified' With Matthew Perry's Story as Both Stars Struggled With the 'Disasters' of Addiction

John Mulaney might not have known Matthew Perry personally, but the Friends actor's death still hit extremely close to home.

Like Perry, who heartbreakingly passed at age 54 after an apparent drowning, Mulaney fought off the suffocating struggles of addiction in front of the public eye.

"Addiction is just a disaster. Life is like a wobbly table at a restaurant and you pile all this s--- on it. Then drugs just kick the f------ legs out from under the table," Mulaney described to a news publication regarding what depending on substances feels like.

Prior to his death, Perry made it his mission to advocate for those struggling with addiction and did his best to help others get sober.

He detailed the entirety of his nearly life-long battle against drug abuse in his best-selling memoir Friends Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which released just short of one year before Perry tragically lost his life.

"I really identified with his story," Mulaney admitted of the 17 Again star. "I'm thinking about him a lot."

While Perry might have drafted his pain into pages, Mulaney told the tale of his life struggles through a hilarious stand-up comedy act titled Baby J, which released on Netflix back in April.

The performance shares the story of his 2020 drug relapse and the intervention held by his friends that lead him into rehab, allowing him to become sober again.

Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!

"Going to rehab and a lot of other things had become public knowledge, and I felt there was no way to start doing stand-up again without going through this," the 41-year-old explained, noting, "I also had a lot to say about it."

"It had been an extremely eventful time, and the goal from the beginning was to do this as funny as I could make it — not as impactful as I could make it, not to pause for dramatic effect," he continued. "I just wanted it to be a little wilder and put you in my very confident, demented brain during the time of addiction."

While his goal was to tell the story of his relapse, Mulaney still had doubts about whether he was telling it in the right way.

"I kept asking friends, 'Do I come off like too much of an a-----?' Jimmy Kimmel saw it at the Troubadour and said, 'Yes, but you have to keep it all,'" the Chicago native recalled.

Variety interviewed Mulaney.