Matthew Perry’s death certificate released plus the story behind ‘Mattman’

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Matthew Perry’s death certificate has been released by the L.A. County Department of Public Health a week after he was buried.

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The certificate obtained by E! News states he was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles near the studio where he shot Friends. Perry’s cause of death is still “deferred,” pending more tests.

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The paperwork also confirms Perry’s time of death as 4:17 p.m. at a residence in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood outside of Los Angeles.

A fire department spokesperson previously revealed that Perry was dead by the time help arrived.

“A bystander had brought the man’s head above the water and gotten him to the edge, then firefighters removed him from the water upon their arrival,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Nicholas Prange told Page Six.

“A rapid medical assessment, sadly, revealed the man was deceased prior to first responder arrival.”

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Firefighters who arrived on the scene shortly after 4 p.m. local time didn’t try to perform CPR on Perry “because he was already beyond medical help,” Prange continued.

“We mourn with families and friends who lose a loved one unexpectedly,” public information officer Erik Scott added in a statement to Fox News.

Perry, 54, was found dead Saturday, Oct. 28, at his home in an apparent drowning, just a few hours after finishing a two-hour game of pickleball. After returning home, he sent his assistant to run a few errands for him and was left alone in his home.

Further analysis is still being conducted to determine whether any illegal drugs were present in his blood or if Perry had taken any of his prescription drugs in excess. The investigation could take months to complete.

Just days before his death in what ended up being his final social media post, Perry shared a photo of himself in a jacuzzi at night. “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good? I’m Mattman,” he wrote in the caption.

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Ironically, the Mattman obsession, which came from his love of Batman, was an idea Perry wanted to turn into a film.

Perry pitched director Adam McKay on the project when they worked together on the 2021 satire Don’t Look Up (his part was cut from the film).

“It’s about this guy. You’d recognize him. His name is Matt and he’s very famous and about 50 years old,” McKay recalled Perry pitching him, according to The Hollywood Reporter. ” His life is a little bit of a mess. He’s lost. Out of the blue a distant relative dies and leaves him $2 billion — and he uses it to become a superhero.”

McKay said the idea was fascinating, but thought that a story based on Perry’s own struggles with addiction might be more interesting.

“Any movie idea is kind of like someone telling you their dream,” McKay explained. “And there’s kind of obviously a meaning behind it. And when I heard that idea, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting that that’s the idea that he wants to do.’”

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But after releasing his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, last year, Perry thought about turning his own story, as the star of Friends who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction despite being one of the most famous faces on the planet, into a film with Zac Efron as the lead.

“He said that he wanted to make a movie about his life,” Perry’s pal Athenna Crosby, 25, told Entertainment Tonight. “And he had worked with Zac Efron in the past (on 17 Again), and he said that he wanted Zac Efron to play him as a younger version (of himself) and that he was gonna ask him soon to do that. He was just looking forward to sharing more about his story and his recovery from addiction, and really championing that cause to help more people, so he was so optimistic and happy about everything that he wanted to do.”

“I’m honoured to hear he was thinking of me to play him,” Efron told PEOPLE this week. “We’ll see. I’d be honoured to do it.”

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X: @markhdaniell

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