They were already in a relationship when the shoot for the 'Friends' episode, 'The One After the Superbowl' began, in which Julia Roberts appeared as a special guest.
Actor Matthew Perry, 53, revealed the reason behind his break-up with actress Julia Roberts. He ended the relationship with the actress because he couldn't handle the enormity of her, according to an excerpt published by The Times of London.
In a personal memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry writes, "Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, and unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts," per Fox News.
"She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and the TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face," Perry writes.
Perry and Roberts began dating while shooting the sitcom, Friends. Perry writes that he found out Roberts "would only do the show if she could be in my story line. Let me say that again – she would only do the show if she could be in my story line. (Was I having a good year or what?) But first, I had to woo her." He sent her three dozen flowers and a forward note, "The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers."
"Her reply was that if I adequately explained quantum physics to her, she'd agree to be on the show," Perry writes. The next day Perry sent her "a paper all about wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle and entanglement, and only some of it was metaphorical. Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift: bagels — lots and lots of bagels, according to Entertainment Weekly.
"Thus began a three-month-long courtship by daily faxes," Perry recalls adding that there were "hundreds" of them. The faxes turned to hour-long phone calls. When they met at his apartment for the first time, she asked him how he was doing and he said, "I’m feeling like the luckiest man in the world."
Perry says that he went to New Mexico to welcome 1996 with her and met her family. "I did let her in, both figuratively and literally, and a relationship began," according to PEOPLE. They were already in a relationship when the shoot for the Friends episode, The One After the Superbowl began, in which Roberts appeared as a special guest. But their relationship was short-lived, much to Roberts' surprise. "Two months later, I was single," Perry writes.
References:
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/matthew-perry-reveals-surprising-reason-dumped-julia-roberts
https://ew.com/tv/matthew-perry-julia-roberts-friends-quantum-physics-paper/
https://people.com/movies/matthew-perry-on-dating-julia-roberts-in-the-90s-too-much-for-me/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images/ Stringer
