EXCLUSIVE: Inside Matthew Perry’s relationship with Briana Brancato: His assistant and best friend pays tribute to the Friends star – but is she the one who found him dead?

Matthew Perry revealed his close and loving – but platonic – relationship with the woman who was his personal assistant in his autobiography last year.

The person who frantically called 911 to report finding Perry’s body in the jacuzzi of his Pacific Palisades home was described as his assistant — but whether the caller was that woman — Briana Brancato — is not confirmed.

Perry, whose body was found in his hot tub on Saturday, let the world know how lonely he was and how he longed for children in his deeply personal memoir, published in October 2022.

But in the book he revealed that one of his closest, long-standing relationships was with Brancato, 34, – although he never gave her a name, only describing her under the pseudonym ‘Erin’.

He said she was his “best friend,” that she “saved my life” and that she even sat by his bedside every night for five months while he recovered from an exploded colon, featuring her in vivid, moving scenes in both the first and second films. and final chapters.

The audio from the dispatch records an assistant’s call and gave a code consistent with drowning. The Los Angeles County coroner has listed Perry’s cause of death as “deferred” pending final toxicology test results.

The late Friends actor said his relationship with his assistant never became romantic, but she quickly became one of his closest companions.

In his autobiography, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry said he met “Erin” several years ago when she worked at a rehab facility he attended.

“In the sober living home in Southern California, I had a view of West LA and two queen beds.” The other bed, he said, was occupied by Erin.

‘I had met her two years earlier, in another rehab clinic where she worked at the time. I didn’t get sober then, but I saw how great she was in every way and promptly stole her out of that sober rehab and made her my assistant, and she became my best friend.”

Brancato has also been clandestine at times about her ties to Perry, disclosing on LinkedIn only her work as a “personal assistant” to an “A List Celebrity” at Phil Shubano Inc. to state.

But corporate records from California show that the company was controlled by Perry and named after a pseudonym he previously used to obtain prescription drugs.

In the wake of his death, Brancato wrote on social media, along with candid photos of Perry, “I have expressed my deepest gratitude to him on countless occasions, not only for leading me to a career I cherish, but also for helping me the opportunity to care for him for 7 years.

‘Along with the countless other experiences for which I am grateful. From witnessing his genius to sharing in his worldly adventures as he lived around the world, he took me on a remarkable journey.

“My heart is heavy, but celebrating my memories is the most profound way I can honor his legacy.

‘I hope Mattman is sending us signals up there, in the great beyond. We really need them. You will be in my heart forever. I love you Matty.”

In 2021, rumors swirled that he was in a romantic relationship with Brancato which caused his breakup with his then-fiancée Molly Hurwitz, after he posted a photo sitting on a couch with his assistant just days after the breakup.

But in his book, he emphasized that the bond between him and “Erin was never sexual.”

He described how she saved his life when staff at a rehab facility he was at in 2019 tried to prevent him from going to hospital after his colon exploded.

The scene, vividly written in the book’s first chapter, tells how she pushed past the nurses, put him in her car and they sped to UCLA on a bumpy ride that left Perry unconscious from head-scratching pain.

“I have to go quickly,” Erin said, her brown, sympathetic eyes looking at me with concern and fear. “We have to take you there now.” It was right here that I lost consciousness,” Perry wrote.

“She saved my life in rehab when my insides exploded, and she still saves it every day,” he later added.

The diligent friend and collaborator then remained at his bedside for months, Perry wrote.

“Erin worked the night shift at that hospital for five months,” he said.

He wrote that the assistant even lived with Perry for a while in his penthouse apartment in Century City, and he described trying to sneak past her and a nurse to pick up OxyContin from his drug dealer when his doctors refused to give him more .

Residence records show that Brancato did indeed live in Penthouse 40 at 1 Century Drive, the luxury tower that the Chandler Bing actor owned at the time.

Perry also wrote about how he first bonded with Brancato over their shared struggles with addiction, and his gratitude that she supported his sobriety by quitting smoking with him — “because she’s still the nicest person in the world.”

He dedicated the last heartbreaking passage on the last pages of his memoirs to his ‘best friend’.

“She is always there when I need her,” he wrote. “Erin, Erin, Erin… She saved my life in rehab when my insides exploded, and she still saves it every day. Who knows what I would do without her; I plan on never finding out.

‘I can tell she wants a cigarette, but she doesn’t break it. Find a friend who will cancel something with you; you’ll be amazed at what that does for a friendship.’