George Clooney says ‘Friends’ didn’t bring Matthew Perry ‘joy’: ‘He wasn’t happy’

George Clooney remembers Matthew Perry as a “funny, funny, funny kid” who rose to fame alongside him in the 1990s but ultimately never found the inner peace he was seeking.

In a new interview with Deadline, Clooney, 62, recalled booking “ER” and Perry landing “Friends” at the same time. Both shows premiered in fall 1994 on NBC.

“We were side by side on the soundstage,” Clooney remembered. “We were all really close. We were at the upfronts in 1994 in New York.”

The Oscar-winning actor said he met Perry when the funnyman was just 16 and up-and-coming in the business. He remembered Perry as a “funny, funny, funny kid.”

“All he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on Earth,’ ” Clooney continued. “And he got on probably one of the best ever. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him.”

Clooney continued, “We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about … It also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”

Perry died Oct. 28 after drowning in the hot tub at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 54.

His cause of death was due to “acute effects of ketamine” and the manner was cited as an accidental drowning, according to his autopsy report released Friday.

The report stated that the “17 Again” star was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and drug addiction, which could have been obtained by a prescription or illegally — it’s unclear which.

However, the medical examiner claimed that the drug in his system could not have been from his final infusion.

“He essentially died from an overdose of ketamine and had about three times the normal [dosage] amount in his system,” pathologist Dr. Michael Baden explained to The Post.