Q&A: Matthew Perry’s sister Talks about the foundation’s goals ahead of tonight’s event at Massey Hall

“When I die, I want helping people to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” Matthew Perry once said. The beloved actor, best known for his role as Chandler on the iconic TV series Friends, wrote about his struggles with addiction in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. He passed away the following year. 

Since then, two foundations in his memory have been started, the Canadian one, Matthew Perry House, run by his sister, executive director Caitlin Morrison. Its stated mission on its web site is “To mitigate the social and economic impact of addiction in Canada by funding emerging research and providing post-treatment wraparound support to people living with substance use disorders.”

Tonight, a talent-filled concert and comedy fundraiser is taking place in Toronto at Massey Hall, in partnership with another extraordinary non-profit, Make Music Matter, which uses the creative process as a therapeutic tool to help empower marginalized individuals and communities. Tickets are available here.

Hosted by Bruce McCulloch (of Kids in the Hall fame) and Lauren Ash, the musical lineup includes award-winning artists Aaron Solowoniuk (of Billy Talent), Aysanabee, Bif Naked, Cone McCaslin & Dave Baksh (of Sum 41), Crown Lands, Fefe Dobson, Hill Kourkoutis, hip hop legends Maestro Fresh Wes & Michie Mee, Julian Taylor, Menno Versteeg (of Hollerado), Sekou Lumumba (of Big Wreck), The Strumbellas, The Washboard Union, Tim Hicks, Todd Morse (of The Offspring). 

Karen Bliss talked to Morrison about the accomplishments, goals and necessity for Matthew Perry House.

You’ve got this fundraising concert at Massey Hall, the second time you’ve put this on.  It’s a great lineup. 

I’ll share a bit of a spoiler, insanely funny. So, it’s got really amazing music and the laugh value too.

I’m really sorry for your loss. Your brother was so well loved. Some people write a song for their loved one who’s passed away, others get a plaque on a bench. You’ve got a foundation and this public event. It’s a beautiful thing to do in his memory. 

Matthew loved music. We did it last year. And then I thought, “Well, putting on a concert is terribly hard. I had no idea. Let’s not do that again” and about a week later, we decided to do it again [laughs].

Is it a coincidence that Live Loud is the first night of the film festival? Are you hoping to have friends of Matthew’s from the industry pop in? 

No, it’s not. We meant to have it the day before the film festival started, but then we couldn’t get the night that we wanted with the venue. And so, we had to go with the first day of the film festival. But the point was to have people already in town because we try to do a mash-up of the funny celebs and the awesome musicians. It can be tricky though. Often people come to TIFF and they have rigorously scheduled days, morning till evening, which one would expect. And so, whereas there are people who are excited about it, the tricky part is figuring out, can you get away from this thing to do this?  

What are your goals and accomplishments so far with the Matthew Perry House?

In the Matthew Perry House, we have two things. One is a charitable organization and we’re working to implement a model of care within existing facilities. So, residential treatment centres and day-use treatment centres and supportive housing places, in as many places as we can across the country, to help embed a more dignified, longer-term standard of care, very much designed on what Matthew saw as some of the things in the system that were not supportive of him in the way that he wanted support. So, looking at how to make that better for people, how to make it a more holistic, lifelong experience. That’s what we’re doing in a sense of the real on-the-ground work. 

And the funding of emerging research is what we plan to do in the foundation part of what we are. So, we’ll very likely pick back up that name, Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada, and use that as the funding piece. But at the moment, all of the Matthew estate stuff is still very much inaccessible. So that’s why that’s a future thing. But in the meantime, I’m very proud of my entire family because we have all basically been funding the other work that we do just all by ourselves, which is a little stressful, but wonderful.

For people confused by the two organizations in his name, what are the differences between Matthew Perry House and the Matthew Perry Foundation? 

They are entirely different organizations. So that foundation is built by former staff of Matthew’s. We’re formed by a friends and family entity and operate in Canada. The one thing that we do that’s similar to each other is we both try to hit hard on removing the shame from seeking support and using Matthew’s words to help do that and his invitation to not be ashamed, to not be embarrassed, to not try to do things alone and to reach out for help. That’s one of the more important things that we can be doing. We’re both doing that. But then their work outside of that is they’ve done things like scholarships for new practitioners in the field. So, working to help build up the number of people working in the area, which is also a key initiative. But in terms of entities, we’re entirely different.

Often when a person is ready to get help, it’s cost prohibitive or there is a waitlist.

That’s a huge issue. There are three most pressing issues about that. One is there just isn’t enough space available. And so, that means building up the capacity to support more people and being creative about that. And part of that is opening up access to become supporters more to those who want to be. Because I find that a lot of people who go through a battle and get to a point where they’re feeling amazing, and they feel like their life has changed, more often than not say, “I want to do this. I want to support people.” And so ensuring that they’re able to do that, I think it’s really important to help make sure that more care is available.

But the other two are roadblocks, even if there is care available, that people face.

One is in the entry point, in the “I am seeking support,” people will say what they will hear one of two things — and I hear the story so many times that really now it almost makes me cry when I hear it because it’s so frustrating how often it happens —  people will either hear, “You are not really ill enough yet. You don’t meet the category of really being in crisis and therefore we can’t serve you yet.” So, get worse and then come to us. Or people will hear, “Well, your needs are too complex and we can’t meet them. So, you’re going to have to go find specialized care elsewhere.” So that’s the entryway point.

And the other one is when people leave care, when they have a slip, rather than looking at how the support might not be serving them in the way that the caregiver is hoping, and therefore looking harder at readdressing, adding more supports, people will often be dismissed. “You got to go. You made a mistake and you’re out.”

What about the cost? Canadians have “free” universal health care (publicly funded), but what would they be surprised to learn about someone seeking help for addiction? 

They currently do have to pay for it. And it’s similar in the case of mental health across the board, is that none of that is built into our universal health care system. So that usually falls to people to have to pay for that.  But what might really surprise them is that people might have the expectation that we [government] can’t afford to add those things. We already hear all the time we’re strapped in health care. We don’t have enough to serve everybody who needs to be served. 

But in the current system, because of the fact that people don’t have access a day-to-day care, call it a family doctor of substance-use health, if you will, because of that, people seek care when they are in an emergency situation, when they are in the ER because they have had a toxic event, or when they come to the point where they’ve lost so many things. They need so much support that they end up staying in a hospital for months and months and months. So, the cost that Canadians are paying now as taxpayers is unbelievable. And I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but we would actually save a tremendous amount in the whole health care system if we did include more preventative mental health and substance use health measures in the Canada Health Act.