Diane Sawyer Interview With Matthew Perry Time

Understanding the Diane Sawyer Interview With Matthew Perry Time

The Diane Sawyer interview with Matthew Perry aired on ABC's 20/20 on April 24, 2013. It was a sit-down conversation where Perry openly discussed his struggles with addiction, his near-death experiences, and his recovery journey. The interview ran approximately 45 minutes including commercial breaks, which is standard for a half-hour network television slot expanded with ad content. The actual runtime of the interview segment itself was roughly 22 to 25 minutes of substantive content before breaking for commercials. When viewed in full without interruptions, most streaming versions run about 44 to 48 minutes total. You can find clips and full segments on the ABC website, YouTube, and various news archive platforms. I remember watching this when it first came out. It was unusual for Perry to go that public and detailed about his condition at the time. Most celebrities in his position stayed vague. He talked about multiple surgeries, the IV fluid abuse, waking up in the ICU. Sawyer pressed him on specific moments without being sensationalistic about it.

One thing people often get wrong about tracking down this interview is the timestamp discrepancy. Different sources list different air dates. The original broadcast was indeed April 24, 2013, but some reruns and regional listings show April 25 or even late April dates depending on the timezone and local affiliate scheduling. If you're trying to reference a specific moment from the interview, double-check which version you're pulling from. The YouTube uploads vary in length because some include extended promo material and others trim the middle sections. Another practical issue I ran into when working with this content: the ABC archives don't always make the full episode easily accessible through their standard search. You have to know the exact episode title, which is just listed under the 20/20 branding with Perry's name as the subject. It wasn't given a separate titled episode name in their system. Searching broadly gets you a lot of clips but not the complete uncut version. The interview itself is structured around three main sections. Sawyer opens with Perry's health crisis and the quantity of anesthesia drugs he was consuming. Then they move into his childhood and the origins of his drinking. The final portion covers his recovery and the changes he made. There isn't a huge amount of footage showing him pre-recovery because this was a present-tense interview. Most of the emotional weight comes from Perry recounting events in retrospect rather than archival footage carrying the narrative.

From a technical standpoint, if you're trying to work with this material for research or reference purposes, the cleanest versions I've found are the ones uploaded directly through network-affiliated channels rather than fan reuploads, which often have compression artifacts and occasional cut segments. The runtime on those official sources stays consistent at around 44 to 47 minutes depending on the platform. There's also a follow-up conversation Perry did with Anderson Cooper three years later in 2016 on Anderson Cooper 360. That one was shorter, about 15 minutes, and covered updates on his sobriety. Some people conflate the two when looking for interview timestamps, so keep that distinction in mind if you're building a timeline or compiling sources.