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

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 deathâ€"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.”

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 drugâ€"who was in touch with Los Angeles’s so-called “Ketamine Queen,” aka Jasveen Sanghaâ€"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, amon g other charges.)

But current and former Hollywood assistants tell VF thatâ€"as beloved as Perry was for Friends, and as admired as he was for his work helping fellow addicts get soberâ€"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” newsletter 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 firedâ€"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 Daniel, 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 40sâ€"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 cofounder, 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 “constantâ€"literally constant.”

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