Jennifer Aniston feels glad Matthew Perry is out of pain after long, hard battle with addiction: ‘We'd been mourning him for a long time'

Indian Express

2 days ago

Matthew Perry died at the age of 54 on October 28, 2023. The actor, who had detailed his life-long struggle with alcohol and drug addiction in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and That Big Terrible Thing, was found unresponsive in his hot tub and was believed to have drowned. Two years after his death, Perry's Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston feels 'glad' he's out of that pain.
'We did everything we could when we could. 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. I'm glad he's out of that pain,' Aniston told Vanity Fair.
Aniston hasn't spoken as conclusively about Perry's demise in the last two years. She even choked and couldn't talk about re-watching Friends in Variety's Actor on Actor last year. The year Perry died, Aniston did reveal to Variety that she'd texted him the morning of the day he died and was happy to know that Perry was 'happy and healthy.'
'He had quit smoking. He was getting in shape. I was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty. He was not in pain. He wasn't struggling. I want people to know he was really healthy, and getting healthy. He was on a pursuit. He worked so hard. He really was dealt a tough one. I miss him dearly. We all do. Boy, he made us laugh really hard,' Aniston recalled.
Perry played the socially awkward and lovable Chandler Bing, who used sarcasm to get by in life, alongside Aniston (Rachel Green), Courteney Cox (Monica Geller), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) on the popular American sitcom Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004 for 10 seasons.
After Perry's passing, Aniston shared a picture of them laughing from the Friends set on her social media, and quoted a text he once sent her, 'Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day.' All five co-stars of Perry had also issued a joint statement remembering the late actor then. 'Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I've never experienced before,' it stated.
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'He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be. For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said 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,' it further read.