Jennifer Aniston recently sat for an interview with a popular magazine and opened up about how the Friends cast had mourned their co-star Matthew Perry even before his death in 2023. Perry passed away on 28th October, 2023 in his Los Angeles home, where he was found unresponsive in a hot tub. However, Jennifer Aniston mentioned that Matthew Perry’s long-drawn battle against addiction was a very “hard one on him”.
Matthew Perry, who played the adorable Chandler Bing on Friends passed away at the age of 54 due to “acute effects of ketamine”. Despite being on recovery towards the end, the actor had suffered from substance abuse for a long time. Jennifer said that the Friends team had been worried about Matthew for a very long time and mourned for him even before he passed away.
“We did everything we could when we could,” Aniston said in the interview. “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.”
Matthew Perry opened up in detail about the challenges he faced over the years with alcoholism and addiction in his book Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was published in 2022. In the book, Perry even acknowledged Aniston’s help to help him get back on track.
In the same interview, Jennifer Aniston also confessed, “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better. I’m glad he’s out of that pain.”
Following Matthew's death, Aniston had taken to Instagram to pay tribute to her friend and open up about the grief that had “cut deep”. In an emotional post, the actor had written, “Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before.” She ended the beautiful tribute with the following words, “Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain…Rest little brother. You always made my day.”