Four-time Emmy nominee Matthew Perry reportedly brought ‘palpable unease’ to the long-hyped Friends: The Reunion, which airs this Thursday on HBO Max. In 2016, the twice-rehabbed 51-year-old admitted on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show that he couldn’t remember three years ‘somewhere between season three and six’ of his time starring as Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom.

Matthew – who received a Champion of Recovery award in 2013 for opening sober living home Perry House – has battled addictions to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines, and alcohol. ‘The special ultimately declines to discuss any of his troubled experience explicitly, but it nonetheless lingers around the margins with palpable unease,’ Variety critic Caroline Framke wrote on Tuesday.

‘When his castmates talk about staying in touch with each other, he cracks a joke about how he doesn’t hear “from anyone” so dryly that it’s impossible to tell if it’s actually a joke.’ In the cheery 104-minute special, Perry also told his co-stars how he felt every night ‘like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh,’ and acknowledged that ‘it wasn’t healthy, for sure.’

The Massachusetts-born, Ottawa-raised actor’s confession leads Emmy winner Lisa Kudrow – who played Phoebe Buffay – to respond with concern that the cast ‘never knew that.’ In 2002-2003, Matthew earned and eye-popping $24M to portray the ‘executive in statistical analysis and data reconfiguration’ on Friends, which ran for 10 seasons spanning 1994-2004.

And Perry’s so-called slurring during a recent People interview was due to ’emergency dental work which left him unwell and in pain’ – according to The Sun. The SAG Award winner currently sells Friends-themed merchandise like shirts, hoodies, baby onesies, and dog bandanas ranging in price from $14.99 to $44.99 via Represent.com.