Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images; Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images
Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox Share ‘Unbreakable Bond’ After Matthew Perry’s Death
Sadly, he’d warned them. When the cast of Friends learned that Matthew Perry had been found dead at 54 in October 2023, they felt “a jolt,” Lisa Kudrow said on the December 10 episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s on Me” podcast. Matthew — who’d struggled with addiction for decades — had once told Lisa, “It won’t be a surprise, but it will be a shock,” when he passed away, she recalled. “And that was exactly right.”
They later learned he’d drowned in his hot tub after succumbing to the acute effects of ketamine, a therapeutic drug he’d secretly been abusing. But how he died didn’t change the reality of their heartbreak: Matty was gone. “We were more than just castmates,” Jennifer Aniston, 55, Courteney Cox, 60, Lisa, 61, David Schwimmer, 58, and Matt LeBlanc, 57, said in a joint statement. “We are a family.”
As they faced their shared grief, Matthew gave them one final gift. “It’s bittersweet, but his death brought them all even closer,” a source exclusively tells Life & Style. “They check in with each other more often now. They renewed a text chain they used to have back in the day.” Thirty years after Friends debuted, Jen, Courteney and Lisa, in particular, adds the source, “still share an unbreakable bond.”
The Close Knit Relationship Between the ‘Friends’ Cast Took Work
As with any family, things can get uncomfortable. For Season 2, Jen and David got salary bumps as their Rachel-and-Ross storyline took off. But they chose friendship over fortune and led the negotiating for six-way pay parity for the rest of Friends’ 10-year run. “It would’ve destroyed us, I think, if someone was soaring financially,” Jen told WSJ Magazine.
On the December 9 episode of the Armchair Expert podcast, Lisa confessed their “six-way relationship took some work.” That meant addressing issues through direct and “respectful communication.” “I had to learn to be like, ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ ” Lisa recalled, explaining that though it could be “hard,” she “saw it modeled really well by Courteney and Jennifer and Matt.”
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew even recounted how a concerned Jen once confronted him in his trailer about his addiction. “‘I know you’re drinking,’” she’d told him. “‘We can smell it.’” At the end, however, Jen insists her old pal was “healthy.” “He had quit smoking. He was getting in shape,” she’s said. “He wasn’t struggling.”
The Chances of a ‘Friends’ Reunion Are Slim
In May, Courteney revealed that she continues to feel her TV husband’s presence. “[Matthew] visits me a lot,” she told CBS News Sunday Morning. While they’d grown close again in recent years, prior to 2021’s HBO Max Friends: The Reunion special, the cast weren’t as in touch. “We only had dinner, the six of us, once before, since the show had ended,” Lisa’s admitted. It took place about a decade after the series’ 2004 finale, she recalled, but the Central Perk Six “didn’t miss a beat. It was so great that it was like, ‘We should do this more.’”
With Matthew gone, they’ll never have that chance again. Many believe his death nixes the possibility of another sitcom reunion, too, because his castmates wouldn’t want to film without the beloved actor. “I think that was it,” Jen said in March of their 2021 HBO Max special. “I think that was the swan song.” Still, she won’t be saying goodbye to Lisa, Courteney, Matt or David anytime soon. “We’ll never shake each other,” Jen gushed. “Family forever!”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Life & Style does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.