Did Matthew Perry’s Assistant Have a Choice? Hollywood Veterans Aren’t So Sure – DNyuz

An intern at a Hollywood production company was vying for an assistant job when he found out his boss was dead. “I got a call telling me not to come in, and I wondered if I was fired,” he says. He’d spent the weekend deep-cleaning the office. Did he break something? Maybe he was in trouble for taking a photograph of a prop from one of the company’s hit movies? “It wound up being way more of a serious issue, however.” His boss had died by suicide.

When he was called back to work, one of the company’s producers gave him a promotion of sorts. He was no longer an intern, he was a runner, which meant he’d get a small hourly wage for doing anything he could to help a company in crisis. “No matter what they asked, I just said, ‘No problem,’” he says. Organize funeral flowers? No problem. Run errands for grieving loved ones? No problem.

Then he was asked to help deal with his late boss’s office.

“I found a lot of drugs in there,” he says. It was the first time he had seen anything like it. “I was like, This is Hollywood. This is drugs.” Higher-ups debated what to do with the controlled substance in question. “I just was like, ‘You guys, if you want to take this giant bag of drugs into another room, I’m never going to ask you what happened to it.’” He was subsequently offered the assistant job. “To this day,” he says, “I think that’s why I got it.”

When the news broke that Matthew Perry’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, is facing up to 15 years in prison for illegally procuring the ketamine that led to the actor’s death, a shudder went through assistants all over the entertainment industry. It was a serious there-but-for-the-grace-of-god moment. After all, the assistant community knows all about how hard it is to say no to a Hollywood boss.

“When I heard Perry’s assistant was arrested, I thought, But that guy was following the orders of his boss.”

No one I interviewed for this piece made light of the tragedy of Perry’s death—or of the alleged crimes that led to the moment when, according to the plea agreement, he told his assistant, “Shoot me up with a big one.” Still, many of them say they would have agreed to break the law if asked and that they can relate to how Iwamasa spent the last weeks of the actor’s life, which he recounted in his guilty plea on August 7 for “one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.”

The “Ketamine Queen” and Matthew Perry’s HollywoodArrow

According to court documents, Iwamasa scrambled to help the actor find more ketamine, sending urgent texts to corrupt doctors saying, “I just ran out.” Iwamasa told law enforcement that he met Dr. Salvador Plasencia in Santa Monica to pick up additional doses, then drove with Perry to a parking lot in Long Beach to get more. (Plasencia has pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.) He coordinated a house call for another ketamine delivery and, after being put in touch with a new source for the drug—who was in touch with Los Angeles’s so-called “Ketamine Queen,” aka Jasveen Sangha—he haggled for vials that weren’t marked for veterinary use. His boss was “only interested in the unmarked ones,” he texted. “Not the horsey version.” In the end, Iwamasa said that he was injecting Perry six to eight times a day. (Sangha has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to distribute ketamine, among other charges.)

But current and former Hollywood assistants tell VF that—as beloved as Perry was for Friends, and as admired as he was for his work helping fellow addicts get sober—he was ultimately responsible for what happened. “When I heard Perry’s assistant was arrested, I thought, But that guy was following the orders of his boss,” said Cathy Campo, who started the Hollywood Assistant blog to help entry-level employees fight for higher pay. She adds, “To be honest, I might have done the same thing.”

“His assistant may have thought, ‘I just can’t be yelled at again.’ Or, ‘I’ve seen what it’s like when I don’t inject him.’ When I heard what happened, my heart went out to that guy.”

Another former assistant agrees: “When I heard the news, I had the reaction, Oh, that’s fucked up. I don’t think the assistant should be charged for that. When you’re an assistant to a celebrity you don’t have any infrastructure to protect you. If you say no, you risk losing your job, your health insurance, your home, everything.”

Yet another former assistant said only Hollywood insiders can imagine the kind of pressure Iwamasa was likely under. “People might be like, ‘But this guy injected him for the third time of the day.’ I’m like, ‘Have you ever been screamed at by your boss?’ His assistant may have thought, ‘I just can’t be yelled at again.’ Or, ‘I’ve seen what it’s like when I don’t inject him.’ When I heard what happened, my heart went out to that guy.”

Actually injecting your boss with drugs is clearly a Rubicon that employees will or won’t cross, depending on who they are. One source told me that, at a recent gathering of former assistants, they discussed what they might have done in Iwamasa’s place: “There were seven of us at dinner. Four of us said we would have probably done it. Three said they hoped they would have established a boundary earlier, before it got to that point.” But the three who said they’d try to set a boundary speculated that they would have been fired—and that the ones who would have done it would have gotten their jobs.

“Matthew Perry’s assistant committed the deepest betrayal that I can possibly think of.”

To be clear, there’s a camp that thinks what Iwamasa did was full-stop horrific. “If you’re injecting illicit substances into your boss, you are no longer his assistant, you are something else entirely,” says a source who worked as a celebrity personal assistant before leaving the business. Headhunter Brian Daniels, who helps place celebrity PAs, goes one step further: “Matthew Perry’s assistant committed the deepest betrayal that I can possibly think of. The assistant is supposed to be the confidante. The person who will protect you. The gatekeeper to keep all of the wolves out. And what did he do? He opened the door and let the wolves walk right into the damn house…. What happened is so profoundly disappointing. I don’t want to be dramatic. I mean, I almost cried.”

Another producer who once worked as a PA believes age is the deciding factor: She probably would have administered drugs when she was in her 20s because she wouldn’t have made it a week without her paycheck, but now she’s in her 40s—and Iwamasa is 59. “My thing with this guy is that he’s a grown adult,” she says. “When you’re older, you know better, so you do better.”

Hollywood is well-known for its abusive culture, particularly when it comes to #MeToo, but the mistreatment of assistants has yet to have its cultural moment, and there has been no official attempt to hold bosses accountable for their often far-reaching demands.

Assistants are wildly underpaid, which leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. According to a 2021 survey by #PayUpHollywood, a grassroots support-staff organization campaigning for fair pay and safe workplaces in the entertainment industry, 95% of respondents said they make less than $70,000 a year. Of those, 54% make less than $40,000. To put this in perspective, the Affordable Housing Report for Los Angeles County says renters who make less than $79,524 annually are considered cost-burdened.

Liz Alper, a television writer and #PayUpHollywood’s founder, says many assistants don’t get health insurance and are discouraged from putting in for overtime. Human resources have been known to tell those who ask for a raise that they’re replaceable, while bosses dangle promotions or some future, life-changing access to an agent or star in exchange for submission. “In Hollywood,” Alper says, “they make it clear that doing anything the boss asks is the job.” She adds that the reports she gets from assistants who’ve been asked by their employer to acquire illegal drugs are “constant—literally constant.”

The movie star’s former PA puts it like this: “You live so they can live.”

The litany of abuse I heard while reporting this story was sobering. The intern whose boss committed suicide later worked for a movie star who, during a meeting with a writer and director, put him in a headlock and force-fed him cupcakes as a joke: “It’s not funny when a movie star tells you that he’s on a diet so you should eat the cupcakes because ‘You’re fat already,’ then starts stuffing cupcakes down your throat.”

As in Perry’s tragic death, a boss can put their own safety in jeopardy. A source told me about a filmmaker who had his subordinate give him drugs to wake him up whenever he couldn’t be roused after taking tranquilizers. An executive told me that early in her career she was in the common area of an A-list director’s office when his assistant burst in terrified because her boss had overdosed on “holistic medication” and was breathing shallowly while unconscious on the floor.

“The problem was that if he went out on a stretcher, it could turn into a news story, and his assistant was so afraid of the fallout that she couldn’t make a decision,” says the executive, who watched, incredulous, as a debate ensued over what to do. Call 911 and risk the director’s wrath? Or don’t call and risk his death? Finally a “grown-up”—a producer, in this case—entered and said to call an ambulance, much to the assistant’s relief. “She had to be 21 or 22 years old.”

Hollywood is awash in powerful guilds that protect writers, directors, actors, and craftspeople, but assistants don’t have a union so their negotiating power is nil. If one feels mistreated at their job, Alper says, their only recourse beyond HR, is to sue. This is considered the nuclear option because, as the saying goes, you’ll never work in this town again.

Still, some do file civil suits. In 2023, Robert DeNiro’s company, Canal Productions, was ordered to pay his former assistant $1.264 million for gender discrimination and retaliation. Harvey Weinstein was sued for sexual harassment by his former assistant, Sandeep Rehal, in 2018. Rehal alleged that her job duties included maintaining Weinstein’s supply of erectile dysfunction injections, facilitating his sexual encounters, and cleaning semen off his couch. She has also claimed that he often told her, “I am Harvey Weinstein and you are at Weinstein University. I decide whether or not you graduate.” (Rehal was part of a class action settlement in which she received $500,000. Weinstein denied the accusations, and per the settlement, was not required to admit any wrongdoing.)

The court documents from a lawsuit filed by Jennifer O’Neill against Lady Gaga, née Stefani Germanotta, in 2013 are also revealing. O’Neill said that she was expected to be on call “24/7,” including when with family or at a doctor’s appointment, and that she wasn’t given her own hotel room when Gaga was on tour. Instead, O’Neill claimed she was expected to sleep in the same bed as the star and be available should she wake up in the middle of the night—including when Gaga didn’t like a movie she was watching and wanted her to change the DVD.

Gaga shot back in the deposition, saying that, when working for her, “You don’t get a schedule that is like you punch in and you can play fucking Tetris at your desk for four hours and then you punch out at the end of the day. This (job) is when I need you, you’re available.” (Rather than go to trial, Gaga settled with O’Neill for an undisclosed amount.)

Why don’t beleaguered assistants just quit? They say it’s not that simple. Thanks to non-disclosure agreements, which are commonplace, an assistant who leaves their employer on bad terms can’t tell anyone who they worked for, much less why they left. That means all the hard work and long hours they’ve put in might amount to nothing, an outcome they say they can’t afford.

“When I lived in LA, I called a friend and asked him to bring heroin to my rehab and he did it. And my girlfriend paid for my drugs because she wanted me to be happy.”

In this sense, Iwamasa’s guilty plea seems to strike a particularly deep chord. He’s older, assistants remind me. He lived with Perry. He would have had a hard time finding something else if he got fired. “This poor guy was legitimately working for one of the most powerful actors ever,” a former assistant says. “He doesn’t have a backup job.”

Several assistants I spoke with said that boundaries often blur. They’re invited to Thanksgivings, taken to events or dinners when their boss doesn’t have anyone else to go with. They become close with their employer’s spouses and kids—who they’re often expected to babysit for free. They say they’ve felt burdened by their boss’s confidences and responsible for their emotional well-being. David Manheim, a recovering addict and former MTV host who created the popular Dopey podcast, says that for those who find Iwasama’s actions inexplicable, enablers can cross all kinds of boundaries for an addict. “When I lived in LA, I called a friend and asked him to bring heroin to my rehab and he did it,” he says. “And my girlfriend paid for my drugs because she wanted me to be happy.”

Carder Stout, a celebrity therapist who also offers addiction treatment, points out that a star’s assistant is brought into an intimate, secretive structure the moment they get the job. “It’s, ‘If I ever hear of you saying anything to anyone you’re done. Fired. Cut off,’” he says. “And there’s a seductive quality to being with someone of an elevated status. I can only imagine that Matthew Perry’s assistant didn’t know that he would be asked to do some of the things that he ultimately did.”

If assistants manage the tricky business of exiting the job gracefully, they can find that the PTSD lingers on. The one-time intern, who’d never seen a bag of drugs before, says he’s perpetually “dialed in” in his daily life, shorthand for his propensity to jump in and solve other people’s tech issues and organizational snafus. His heart stops whenever he sees his former boss’s name on his phone. He’s seeing a therapist.

Now that he’s on the creative side of the business, a single project for him pays over four times what he was paid as an assistant, but he wonders if everything he sacrificed—his time, his dignity—was worth it. “I always hoped for the ‘peer treatment,’” he says, meaning he was led to believe that one day his former boss would call an executive to sing his praises or make an important introduction. Maybe he’d at least say he was proud of him. None of that has happened.

A few months after he quit, however, his former boss did reach out for an unexpected reason: Would he go to a celebrity pal’s house and replace all his light bulbs? The actor had left a lot of his lights on before he left town and was afraid they’d burn out. Still thinking there could be some future reward for his efforts, the ex-assistant had an answer at the ready: “No problem.”