Jennifer Aniston says 'Friends' cast had 'been mourning' Matthew Perry before his death
Jennifer Aniston is opening about her friendship with her late "Friends" co-star, Matthew Perry.
The actress said in a recent Vanity Fair cover interview that she and the "Friends" cast had been mourning Perry long before he died from the acute effects of ketamine at age 54 in October 2023.
"We did everything we could when we could," Aniston said, referring to Perry's long struggle with addiction. "But it almost felt like we'd been mourning Matthew for a long time because his battle with that disease was a really hard one for him to fight. As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there's a part of me that thinks this is better."
She added, "I'm glad he's out of that pain."
Perry played Chandler Bing on "Friends," starring alongside Aniston, who played Rachel Green.
After the NBC sitcom's finale in May 2004, the cast, which also included Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc, remained close.
Prior to his death, Perry had been open about his battle with addiction in his memoir, "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing."
In an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2020, Perry talked about how the cast had stood by him during those difficult moments.
He wrote in his memoir, "In nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguins group around it and prop it up until it's better. This is what my co-stars on 'Friends' did for me."
After Perry's death, Aniston shared a moving tribute to the star on Instagram. It included a photo of the pair laughing on the "Friends" set and a screenshot of a text message Perry had sent her of the same photo.
"Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day," Perry's text to Aniston read.
In the caption of her Instagram post, Aniston wrote that she loved Perry and still spoke to him every day.
"Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain," she wrote at the time. "I talk to you every day… sometimes I can almost hear you saying 'could you BE any crazier?'"
