‘Friends’ co-stars pay tribute to Matthew Perry

Los Angeles: After Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry’s three other ‘Friends’ co-stars, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer, shared their fond memories with the actor in their personal social media posts since his death last month.

Perry died at the age of 54 on October 30 at his Pacific Palisades home in Los Angeles.

On ‘Friends’, the actor played one of the six lead characters, Chandler Bing, who was roommates with LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani, college batchmates with Schwimmer’s Ross Geller and friend-turned-husband to Cox’s Monica Geller.

Perry, who had detailed his life-long struggle with alcohol and drug addiction in his 2022 memoir, was found unresponsive in his hot tub and was believed to have drowned.

“Oh boy, this one has cut deep,” Aniston, 54, began in an ‘Instagram’ post. In his memoir, Perry wrote how the ‘Friends’ cast, especially Aniston, were his pillar of support during his battle with addiction.

The actor, who addressed Perry in her note as her ‘little brother’ Matty, said having to say goodbye to him has been ‘an insane wave of emotions’ that she had never experienced before.

“We all experience loss at some point in our lives. Loss of life or loss of love. Being able to really sit in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deeply. And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the six of us,” she wrote.

Perry played the socially awkward and lovable Chandler Bing, who used sarcasm to get by in life, alongside Cox, Aniston’s Rachel Green, Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay, LeBlanc and Schwimmer in the NBC series from 1994 to 2004.

Aniston described the ‘Friends’ cast as a ‘chosen family’.

“For Matty, he knew he loved to make people laugh. As he said to himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’, he thought he was going to die. His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard,” she added.

The actor also shared a screenshot of one of her texts with Perry, in which he captioned a behind-the-scenes photo of the two and wrote, “Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day.”

“I found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. It says it all. (See the second slide…) Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. I talk to you every day. Sometimes, I can almost hear you saying, ‘Could you be any crazier?’ Rest, little brother. You always made my day,” Aniston ended her tribute.

Kudrow said she and Perry initially bonded over a ‘fun’ game of poker. Her ‘Instagram’ post was full of ‘thank you’ for several gestures the late actor made.

“Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said that my muscles ached and tears poured down my face every day. Thank you for your open heart in a six-way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of ‘talking’. Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then being completely brilliant. Thank you for the best 10 years a person gets to have. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for all I learned about grace and love through knowing you. Thank you for the time I got to have with you, Matthew,” the 60-year-old actor wrote.

Schwimmer thanked Perry for 10 ‘incredible years of laughter and creativity’.

“I will never forget your impeccable comic timing and delivery. You could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny that it still astonishes you. And you had heart, which you were generous with and shared with us, so we could create a family out of six strangers,” he said in an ‘Instagram’ post.

The 57-year-old shared a photo of his and Perry’s characters, Ross and Chandler, in their ‘Miami Vice’-inspired college attire, as shown in a Thanksgiving flashback episode of ‘Friends’.

“This photo is from one of my favourite moments with you. Now, it makes me smile and grieve at the same time. I imagine you up there, somewhere, in the same white suit, hands in your pockets, looking around: ‘Could there be any more clouds?’” Schwimmer wrote.

Previously, LeBlanc and Cox shared personal statements on Perry’s death on social media.

In an ‘Instagram’ post, LeBlanc bid adieu to Perry, his co-star of 10 years on the show and a real-life friend.

“It is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye. The times we had together are honestly among the favourite times of my life. It was an honour to share the stage with you and to call you my friend. I will always smile when I think of you and I’ll never forget you. Never. Spread your wings and fly, brother. You’re finally free. Much love,” LeBlanc, 56, said.

Cox, 59, remembered Perry as a ‘funny and kind’ person.

“I am so grateful for every moment I had with you, Matty and I miss you every day. When you work with someone as closely as I did with Matthew, there are thousands of moments I wish I could share,” she wrote in her ‘Instagram’ post.

Perry’s cause of death has not yet been announced.