Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer are the latest members of the Friends cast to share emotional tributes to their late co-star Matthew Perry.
“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,” Aniston began her Instagram caption, posted Wednesday.
“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.”
The Morning Show star, 54, called Perry her “chosen family” who “forever changed the course” of her life.
“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,” she shared.
“His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard.”
Her post also included a text message exchange between the pair, where Perry told her “Making you laugh just made my day,” as well as an emotional clip from the sitcom where their characters, Rachel Green and Chandler Bing, share a heartfelt goodbye.
Instagram / @jenniferaniston
Just moments after Aniston’s post, Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller, posted his own tribute.
“Matty, thank you for ten incredible years of laughter and creativity,” he began.
“I will never forget your impeccable comic timing and delivery. You could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny it still astonishes.
“And you had heart. Which you were generous with, and shared with us, so we could create a family out of six strangers.
Schwimmer also shared a photo from Season 5 of Friends, where the duo are dressed up in ’80s-style suits from one of the show’s famed throwback scenes.
“This photo is from one of my favorite moments with you. Now it makes me smile and grieve at the same time. I imagine you up there, somewhere, in the same white suit, hands in your pockets, looking around — ‘Could there BE any more clouds?’” Schwimmer continued.
Aniston and Schwimmer’s posts come on the heels of tributes posted Tuesday by Perry’s fellow Friends castmates, Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox.
LeBlanc, whose character Joey Tribbiani was best friends and roommates with Perry’s Chandler Bing, shared a selection of photos from the set of Friends, including two pictures of them embracing.
And Cox, whose character Monica Geller married Chandler Bing, shared an extended clip of the familiar scene where their characters try to hide their one-night stand from their friends.
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News of Perry’s death broke late last month after he was found “unconscious in a stand-alone jacuzzi” by law enforcement officials in his Pacific Palisades home on Oct. 28. The Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed the 54-year-old had been “deceased prior to the first responder’s arrival.” The official cause of death has yet to be confirmed pending a toxicology report.
Cox, LeBlanc, Aniston, Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow released a joint statement to the media saying there were “so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew.”
“We were more than just cast mates. We are a family.”
Perry’s death came one year after the publication of his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which chronicled his decades-long struggle with addiction to prescription painkillers and alcohol. At the time, Perry said he had been sober for about 18 months.
Perry, Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, LeBlanc and Schwimmer were catapulted to worldwide fame shortly after Friends debuted in 1994. The sitcom remained a highly watched hit throughout its 10 seasons and remains popular on streaming.
David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Matt Le Blanc as Joey Tribbiani, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay in ‘Friends,’ circa 1995.
NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
The cast reunited for a reunion special in 2021 on HBO Max where Perry talked about their continued bond, which lasted well beyond the end of the show.
“The best way that I can describe it is after the show was over, at a party or any kind of social gathering, if one of us bumped into each other, that was it. That was the end of the night. You just sat with the person all night long and that was it,” Perry said.
“You apologized to the people you were with, but they had to understand you had met somebody special to you and you were going to talk to that person for the rest of the night,” he continued. “And that’s the way it worked.”
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