Friends Forever: Jennifer Aniston's Touching Tribute To Matthew Perry
In the last days of October 2023, beloved Friends actor Matthew Perry was found dead in his hot tub. He had only been 54 years old, and despite his considerable comedic talents he’d lived a hard life: everyone knew he had terrible struggles with addiction. But that didn’t stop the people to whom he was closest — including his Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston — from loving him. And after his passing, Aniston wrote a heartfelt and emotive tribute to the man who brought Chandler Bing to life.
Tribute
Aniston made her post in November 2023 once she had taken time to fully process the loss. It was an extremely heartfelt tribute to a man she’d loved like a brother.
“Oh boy, this one has cut deep... Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before,” was how her moving message began.
Sitting in the grief
She continued, “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 deep.”
“And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the six of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be.”
Laughter
Then Aniston talked a bit about Perry’s personality. “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. In the last couple weeks, I’ve been poring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again. I’ll keep them forever and ever. I found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. It says it all.”
Text messages
The text message exchange was on a separate slide. There was a message from Perry with a picture of him and Aniston laughing together, and the message read, “Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day.”
Aniston’s response was “Awww the first of THOUSANDS of times…” along with a starry-eyed emoji and a crying-with-laughter emoji. It was a very heartfelt glimpse into what a loving relationship they’d had.