Jennifer Aniston says she was 'mourning' Matthew Perry before he died

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Jennifer Aniston says that she and her castmates on Friends had been “mourning” Matthew Perry for years before his death.

Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom for 10 seasons, died on Oct. 23, 2023, from the “acute effects” of the anesthetic ketamine after a decades-long battle with drugs and alcohol.

The actor was reportedly “receiving ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety,” according to USA Today.

Five people were charged in his death, including Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who pleaded guilty to ketamine distribution last month. Perry’s personal assistant, his friend and another doctor also entered guilty pleas and are cooperating with prosecutors.

Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors say was known to her customers as “The Ketamine Queen,” will go on trial next month.

In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Aniston, 56, says that she and Perry’s colleagues on the show — Courteney Cox (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey) and David Schwimmer (Ross) — worried about him constantly.

“We did everything we could when we could,” Aniston told the magazine about trying to help Perry. “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.”  

After Perry’s death at age 54, Aniston paid tribute to the five-time Emmy nominee in a heartfelt social media message.

“Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before,” Aniston wrote in an Instagram post. “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.” 

Aniston continued, “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. In the last couple weeks, I’ve been pouring 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.”

The message from Perry read, “‘Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day,'” alongside a photo of the two of them giggling while reading a script.

Aniston ended her post by saying Perry “always made my day.”

“Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain,” she wrote. “I talk to you every day … sometimes I can almost hear you saying, ‘could you BE any crazier?'”

Perry had been candid about his battle with substance abuse and in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he wrote about using ketamine “to ease pain and help with depression.”

“It was something different, and anything different is good,” Perry wrote. “Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel.”

Adding that the infusions made him feel as if he were dying, Perry detailed his struggle with the drug.

“‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘This is what happens when you die,’” Perry wrote. “Yet I would continually sign up for this s*** because it was something different, and anything different is good.”

In a conversation with her Morning Show co-star Reese Witherspoon for Variety’s Emmys edition in 2024, Aniston said Perry “was happy” in the days leading up to his shocking death.

“He was healthy. He had quit smoking. He was getting in shape,” she said. “He was happy — that’s all I know… He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy.” 

mdaniell@postmedia.com