It’s been about six weeks since the death of Matthew Perry, and those who knew and worked closely with him are gradually opening up about their memories with the late actor. The cast of Friends quickly put out a joint statement days after his death, while the individual actors followed with their own social media posts in the following weeks. Now, in a joint interview with her Morning Show costar Reese Witherspoon for Variety, Jennifer Aniston shared some of her final memories with her departed friend.
“He was happy. He was healthy. He had quit smoking. He was getting in shape. He was happy—that’s all I know,” Aniston said. “I was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty. He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy.”
Perry had been open about his struggles with drug abuse in the past and discussed them at length and his process of getting sober in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing. “I want people to know he was really healthy, and getting healthy,” Aniston continued. “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 also praised Perry’s style of delivering dialogue, presumably the Chandler Bing-isms à la “Could I be wearing any more clothes?” and the like. “I also have to say I think Matthew Perry’s dialect, his way of speaking, created a whole different world,” Aniston said. “We went with his lead, in a way. It just added something to our joy.”
Most of these comments echo what Aniston said last month in her Instagram tribute to Perry, which included a screenshot of a text message between the two of them. “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?’”