The actor’s publicist and manager worked with him for more than 30 years, before his death in 2023. They discuss the man behind the headlines – and why they are continuing his mission to help others struggling with addiction

Watch the third season of Friends, writes Matthew Perry in his memoir, and you can see how thin he had become by the end of it. “Opioids fuck with your appetite, plus they make you vomit constantly,” he writes. Look again, and yes – his fragile wrists emerge from a shirt that looks as if he has borrowed it from someone far larger, his trousers hang off him – and it’s unbearably sad now, with the knowledge that addiction would kill Perry nearly 30 years later, at the age of 54. At the time, most people watching probably wouldn’t have noticed, dazzled instead by Perry’s sharpness and immaculate comic timing as Chandler Bing, the show’s dry wit. He was having to take 55 Vicodin pills a day – an opioid - just to function and avoid terrible withdrawal symptoms, but he was never high while he was working, he writes in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which came out in 2022. He just had to make it to the end of the season so he could get help. Had the series lasted for more than its 25 episodes, he thought it would have killed him.

That was the first time Perry went into rehab. He was 26, and one of the biggest stars in the world. There would be more than 65 attempts to detox from drug and alcohol addiction over the next decades until his death in 2023. Last week, a doctor was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for supplying ketamine in the lead-up to Perry’s death (though not the ketamine that killed him); three others who have pleaded guilty will be sentenced in the coming months.

As Wuthering Heights gets a raunchy Hollywood remake, our writer takes a pilgrimage through Haworth, the village where its author lived – and finds her spirit still electrifying the cobbled streets and windswept moors

It’s a crisp afternoon in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and I’m drinking a pint of Emily Brontë beer in The Kings Arms. Other Brontës are on tap – Anne is a traditional ale, Charlotte an IPA, Branwell a porter – but the barman says Emily, an amber ale with a “malty biscuit flavour”, is the most popular. It’s the obvious choice today, anyway: in a few hours, Oscar-winning film-maker Emerald Fennell will be at the Brontë women’s writing festival in a church just up the road, discussing her adaptation of Emily’s 19th-century gothic masterpiece Wuthering Heights.

The film, to be released just before Valentine’s Day next year, is already scandal-ridden. It all started with Fennell’s casting of Hollywood stars Jacob Elordi and Margot (“Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Barbie”) Robbie causing uproar. An erotic teaser trailer full of tight bodices, cracking whips and sweaty bodies had the same effect. But heads were really sent spinning by reports of a scene with a public hanging and a nun who “fondles the corpse’s visible erection”.

Across western democracies, established conservatives are yielding to radical nationalism. There’s no sign that Britain will be the exception

In free societies, when you don’t like the government, you support the opposition. In dictatorships, or under military occupation, you join the resistance. The distinction isn’t precise but it matters.

All European democracies have radical anti-immigration parties, some on the fringes of opposition, some that have crossed into the mainstream. None qualify as heroic resistance movements, except in the minds of white supremacists who see liberal institutions as part of a conspiracy to ruin Europe by filling it with foreigners. That is also the view taken in the new White House national security strategy, published last week.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

The battle to buy Warner Bros Discovery has captured Donald Trump’s attention. The US President has declared he’ll be involved in the decision on the company’s sale, as both Netflix and Paramount fight to take over the entertainment giant. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian US deputy business editor Callum Jones

The Green party leader is riding high in the polls. But across the political spectrum, uncritical adulation leads nowhere fast

Shortly after Donald Trump launched his first White House run in 2015, television’s Kelly Osbourne made one of her regular appearances on The View, which is basically the American version of Loose Women but doesn’t feel the need to have a cringey title. Trump had made some extremely nasty comments about Mexican immigrants, and Kelly had a rhetorical question for the other ladies gathered round the wood-effect dining table that morning. “You kick every Latino out of this country,” she sassed, “then WHO is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?”

Oooooof. The reaction from fellow panellist Rosie Perez was instantaneously negative, to the point that even Kelly realised in the moment that this needed clean-up. Apparently there weren’t any willing rubber-gloved Latinos on hand, so madam was going to have to do it herself. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Osbourne shot back. “Come on! You know I would never mean it like that! I’m not part of this argument.” A media firestorm nonetheless ensued, though Kelly declined to apologise for even the appearance of racism, I think on the basis that people like her simply are not capable of subconsciously holding unpleasant views that they accidentally reveal while making important TV appearances.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

With a sharp eye and saturated colours, Parr’s photographs revealed the world in all its eccentric glory. Here, his friends, peers and collaborators pay tribute to a master

Grayson Perry, artist
I’ve never really been a fanboy, but the first time I saw Martin Parr I ran up and drunkenly hugged him. I said: “I love you Martin Parr!” I couldn’t help it. He was a hero of mine. And over the years he became my best artist friend.

Zelenskyy says he would hold wartime elections within months given help from allies and Ukraine’s parliament

• Trump lambasts ‘weak’ and ‘decaying’ Europe and hints at walking away from Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is ready to hold a wartime election within the next three months, if Ukraine’s parliament and foreign allies will allow it, after Donald Trump accused him of clinging on to power.

Zelenskyy, clearly irritated by Trump’s intervention, said that “this is a question for the people of Ukraine, not people from other states, with all due respect to our partners”.

Exclusive: PM calls for members of European convention on human rights to allow tougher action to protect borders

• We must protect our borders to defend our democracies – here’s how

Keir Starmer has called on European leaders to urgently curb joint human rights laws so that member states can take tougher action to protect their borders and see off the rise of the populist right across the continent.

Before a crucial European summit on Wednesday, the prime minister urged fellow members to “go further” in modernising the interpretation of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) to prevent asylum seekers using it to avoid deportation.

Home secretary’s plans for a radical reshaping of policing in England and Wales could be delayed due to lack of funds

The home secretary’s ambitions for the biggest reforms to policing since the 1960s are being threatened by a lack of money, with plans being considered for the creation of Britain’s FBI and slashing the number of forces.

Shabana Mahmood believes a radical reshaping of policing in England and Wales is needed, with the number of forces covering local areas being reduced from 43 to as low as the “mid teens” over time.

Scientists issue urgent warning about chemicals, found to cause cancer and infertility as well as harming environment

Scientists have issued an urgent warning that some of the synthetic chemicals that help underpin the current food system are driving increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions and infertility, while degrading the foundations of global agriculture.

The health burden from phthalates, bisphenols, pesticides and Pfas “forever chemicals” amounts to up to $2.2tn a year – roughly as much as the profits of the world’s 100 largest publicly listed companies, according to the report published on Wednesday.