‘Friends’: Jennifer Aniston Makes Blunt Confession About Matthew Perry’s Death 2 Years Later

Jennifer Aniston made a blunt confession about her Friends co-star Matthew Perry‘s death two years later.

In an interview with Elle published on November 12, the actress who played Rachel Greene on the beloved ’90s and early 2000s sitcom, opened up about losing the man behind Chandler Bing. Perry died at 54 on October 28, 2023, in an accidental drowning as a result of the “acute effects of ketamine.”

“It was so alarming and shocking, yet not shocking,” Aniston, 56, told the publication.

She added that she and her Friends castmates — which included Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer — “always said, ‘I hope I never get that phone call.'”

“We miss him. He’s missed,” Aniston continued. “He was a brilliant human being and an extraordinary talent, loved deeply, and wanted happiness more than anything. It makes me sad that he never really achieved that, because he deserved it.”

Before his death, Perry opened up about his ongoing struggle with addiction since the age of 14 in his 2022 book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir. He also admitted the drug-related reason he couldn’t bring himself to watch Friends during a 2022 interview on the Q With Tom Power podcast.

“I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show because I could go drinking…opiates…drinking…cocaine,” he explained. “Like I could tell season by season by how I looked.”

In 2019, Perry had a near-death experience after his colon burst due to his opioid abuse. The health scare left in in a coma for two weeks, in the hospital for five months, and with a colostomy bag. However, he beat the odds after doctors placed him on ECMO and gave him only a 2% chance of living.

Perry opened up about his harrowing journey with addiction as a way to help others. “The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says: ‘I can’t stop drinking. Can you help me?’ I can say yes and follow up and do it,” he shared on Q With Tom Power.

He added, “I’ve said this for a long time: When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned. I want [helping people] to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.”

Friends, streaming on HBO Max