Valerie Bertinelli Responded To Matthew Perry's Relationship Accusations

The late Matthew Perry had a story to tell about "Kids Baking Championship" co-host Valerie Bertinelli, but it apparently was no tall tale. In the actor's memoir "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing," in which he hit on the TV show that made him a star as well as his issues with substance addiction, his 2018 near-death experience from opioid abuse, and of course all of the typical juicy Hollywood moments that sell any show biz memoir, Perry claimed that he once made out with Valerie Bertinelli. The kicker was that she was not only married to Eddie Van Halen at the time, but the legendary rock guitarist was actually in the same room (albeit in an unconscious state).

The incident occurred back in 1990 when Bertinelli and Perry briefly shared the screen in the short-lived private-eye sitcom "Sydney". One night while Perry was hanging out with Bertinelli and Van Halen at the couple's home, Van Halen had "enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard" and passed out. Even though Bertinelli's spouse was right there, Perry carpe'd the heck out of that diem and started smooching the woman for whom he'd been harboring a secret crush. While Perry said he confessed to having feelings for her, and that she claimed to reciprocate them in the heat of the moment, the next day he was firmly back in the friend zone (as opposed to the "Friends" zone since his starring vehicle wouldn't debut for another four years).

When the news broke about Matthew Perry's memoir and its (slightly) steamy content related to the Food Network host, Valerie Bertinelli chose to step up and address the issue, although she did so in a brief TikTok video rather than in a lengthy tell-all memoir of her own. The video shows an abashed Bertinelli waving at the camera and then literally face-palming under the text "Anyone misbehave in their 20s and early 30s? Are you mortified?" The background music she chose, appropriately enough, was the Taylor Swift song "Anti-Hero" with its lyric "It's me, hi, I'm the problem."

Bertinelli's video made her confession — which, admittedly, was a fairly minor peccadillo as celebrity hijinks go — seem like the kind of thing almost anyone could relate to, and from the comments, it was obvious that her fans felt the same. Many of the reactions on both the Tiktok video and its re-posting on Instagram seemed to come from women in a similar age demographic who also had their "bad girl moments" from a long-ago era. Hey, if there are no pics, it didn't happen, right? What happens off the internet, stays off the internet ... maybe not always. While some commenters felt that Perry's kiss-and-tell had been "classless," others, however, admitted to having sympathy for Perry in that they, too, once had — or still do have — a bit of a crush on the actress who first starred in the '70s sitcom "One Day at a Time."

One person who'd actually read Matthew Perry's memoir commented on Valerie Bertinelli's Instagram post that Perry had "said lovely things about" his former co-star and crush. Actually, according to Perry himself, the feelings he had for Bertinelli went far beyond a simple crush. In "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir," Perry revealed that he was "completely captivated" with his co-star and dreamed of the day she'd leave her husband for him. He admits that he was just 19 at the time, nowhere near the star that Van Halen was and nowhere near the star that he himself would become in just a few years, so his hopes were a bit unrealistic.

Perry felt that maybe, just maybe, his wishes had all come true after he and Bertinelli finally shared a stolen kiss (or full-on "makeout session," as he put it), but the next day things were back to business and she never again acknowledged their special moment. He described himself as "devastated," but admits that he did not blame Bertinelli, then or at the time of writing his memoir. In fact, he explained that he'd long had an attraction to unavailable women based on a difficult relationship with his mother.

Bertinelli, in turn, seems to harbor no grudge against Perry for going public with his three-decade-old crush. In an Instagram story she released after his untimely passing, she eulogized him with the words "Rest in peace, sweet man."