Actress Jennifer Aniston broke her silence on the death of her “Friends” co-star Matthew Perry in an emotional tribute to the late star on Instagram Wednesday.
The two starred together on the long-running NBC sitcom “Friends” from 1994 to 2004.
But Aniston had not spoken publicly about Perry’s sudden Oct. 28 drowning death until this week, when she shared an image of the pair together and said his passing has cut her “deep.”
“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, 54, wrote.
She continued:
“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. 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.”
Aniston said Perry succeeded in always making her and their co-stars laugh.
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“In the last couple weeks, I’ve been pouring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again,” she added. “I’ll keep them forever and ever. I found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. It says it all.”
In the post, Aniston included a text message screenshot as well as a video clip of a heartfelt moment between their characters on “Friends.”
She concluded, “Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. I talk to you every day… sometimes I can almost hear you saying ‘could you BE any crazier?’ Rest little brother. You always made my day…”
Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub in his California home two weeks ago, but no cause of death has been released.
Perry wrote in his 2022 memoir that he fell in love with Aniston during their show’s 10-year run, Page Six reported.
His romantic feelings were not reciprocated and he eventually moved on.
He wrote that they were both “able to sail right past the past and focus on the fact that we had both gotten the best job Hollywood had to offer.”
Perry struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for the final two decades of his life.