The creators of Friends have recalled their last conversations with Matthew Perry, saying he was “in a really good place” shortly before he died.
In a joint interview on CBS’s Today show, Marta Kauffman and David Crane also discussed their shock at the news of Perry’s death at the age of 54 on Saturday.
“He was happy and chipper,” Kauffman said of her conversation with Perry, who played the beloved Chandler Bing for 10 seasons of the hit sitcom. “He didn’t seem weighed down by anything. He was in a really good place, which is why this seems so unfair.”
Kauffman said she was in “utter shock” after hearing the news last weekend. The actor was found unresponsive in his hot tub at his Los Angeles home, the Los Angeles police department said. His cause of death remains under investigation.
“My first instinct was to text him, honestly. And then deep sadness. So much sadness. It’s hard to grasp,” she said. “One minute he’s here and happy and then poof. And doing good in the world. Really doing good in the world.
“He seemed better than I had seen in a while. I was so thrilled to see that. He was emotionally in a good place. He looked good. He quit smoking. Yes, he was sober. He learned things throughout this and what he learned more than anything is that he wants to help other addicts, and it gave him purpose.”
Perry was open about his struggles with addiction and sobriety, writing in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing about becoming an alcoholic as a teenager and his addiction to pain medication after a jetskiing accident in 1997.
Crane was asked by the co-anchor Hoda Kotb about Perry’s previous comments that people would be “shocked about his passing but not surprised”.
He said: “Given the journey he’d been on, and we were all aware of it, there was always a part that was kind of bracing for something like this. It is hard to believe, because he was such an alive person that it’s hard to believe he’s not here.”
Crane said that, while he felt that Perry would understand the impact he had on people, “at the same time I wonder … how much he was able to internalise it and find comfort in it”.
The producers said they were aware of Perry’s addiction journey over the years and that their priority was to support him.
“I talked to him about it actually right after the reunion [which aired in 2021],” Kauffman said. “Once he went into treatment, he was open about it. Unless he was using.”
Closing the interview, she said: “I lost a friend in multiple ways, and what’s amazing is the outpouring from the fans who lost a friend of theirs, too. And I hope wherever he is, he feels it.”
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer issued a joint statement this week paying tribute to their Friends co-star, saying they were “utterly devastated by the loss”.
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