Keanu Reeves may be one of today’s most beloved — and, by all accounts, nicest — celebrities out there, but he wasn’t always so revered. In the’90s his Ted “Theodore” Logan image was so potent that he was mocked on The Critic for doing Shakespeare (which he actually did). Apparently Matthew Perry never got the memo that the tide had turned and he was adored, as he included multiple, strange disses of the fellow actor in his memoir. Perry apologized for them upon publication, and now he’s making good on that.
“I said a stupid thing. It was a mean thing to do,” Perry said at a recent book festival, as per The Los Angeles Times. “I pulled his name because I live on the same street. I’ve apologized publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”
He added, “If I run into the guy, I’ll apologize. It was just stupid.”
In his book, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry randomly laments Reeves’ existence twice, when addressing the deaths of other celebrities.
“Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry writes. Later in the book, he describes learning about the death of his Almost Heroes co-star Chris Farley, writing that he “punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out.” Then he adds, again, “Keanu Reeves walks among us.”
After the backlash over his odd Keanu disses, Perry released a statement. “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu,” he wrote. “I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”
As for Reeves, he was more puzzled than offended, telling Us Weekly that he “thought the comments came out of left field. It’s kind of backfired on Matthew anyway, which is why he had to apologize.”
In any case, anyone who purchases Perry’s book in the future will do so without having to read bizarre attacks on the erstwhile (or future?) Neo.
(Via LA Times)