Matthew Perry’s cause of death revealed: Inside the Friends star’s final moments

Friends star Matthew Perry’s body is now with the LA County Medical Examiner’s Office after the 54-year-old actor was found dead in his Pacific Palisades home over the weekend.

Perry is believed to have drowned hours after a game of pickleball, and in a redacted 16-second recording of a 911 dispatch call obtained by TMZ, a man can be heard saying “rescue 23″ and “drowning”.

An autopsy is pending and the coroner is reportedly prepared to do a toxicology examination, but the results could take several months.

Perry’s dad John Bennett Perry, 82, was seen arriving at his son’s LA home looking stricken hours after the Friends star’s death. The actor’s mum Suzanne was seen outside the house looking downcast in the passenger seat of a car alongside Perry’s stepdad Keith Morrison.

Investigators turned up at Perry’s mansion around 7pm on Saturday (local time), and waited for the coroner. A 911 call was said to have been made at around 4pm.

The medical examiner arrived about 10.35pm and was still at the property with the body in the residence after midnight on Saturday.

Police sources told NBC News and CNN they initially believed they were attending a possible “water rescue” at Perry’s home after being called at 4.07pm on Saturday.

They arrived to find him dead from an apparent drowning in his hot tub, with the LA Times reporting the actor was “unresponsive”.

Perry was not taken to hospital and an official cause of death has not yet been announced.

The actor had reportedly played a two-hour game of pickleball – similar to tennis but on a smaller court with a lower net – before he went home and relaxed in his hot tub.

Officers from the LA Police Department’s robbery-homicide division were also sent to the home in Pacific Palisades, but a source said no drugs or signs of foul play were found at the scene.

It’s now been reported a range of prescription drugs were found at Perry’s home, from anti-depressants to anxiety tablets and heart medication.

Five days before his death, Perry posted an image of himself relaxing at night in the hot tub where he died, alongside the caption: “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good? I’m Mattman.”

He spent 10 seasons playing Chandler Bing on Friends while struggling with a string of addictions.

His memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing exposed his struggles with addictions that got so severe that in 2018 at the age of 49 he suffered a gastrointestinal perforation as a result of his extreme opiate usage.

He was given just a 2 per cent chance of living after being comatose for two weeks and the actor had to use a colostomy bag while his colon healed.

He said at the peak of his addictions he was consuming about 55 Vicodin pills a day and weighed just 58kg.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz