Jennifer Aniston has paid tribute to her Friends co-star Matthew Perry.
The late 54-year-old sadly passed away at his LA home on October 28 after an apparent drowning.
Taking to Instagram on Wednesday, Jennifer, who played Rachel Green opposite Matthew’s Chandler Bing on the popular US sitcom, wrote: “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,” Jennifer continued to write.
“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.”
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“For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh,” Jennifer continued. “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.”
“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,” Jennifer concluded. “You always made my day…”
It comes after a video resurfaced of Jennifer breaking down in tears over the “idea of losing” Matthew in the wake of the actor’s untimely death.
In a 2004 interview with Diane Sawyer, the actress was asked what her Friends co-star didn’t know about himself and needed to hear.
“That he’s alright,” the now-54-year-old replied before becoming emotional.
“He struggled,” Jennifer continued, referencing Matthew’s struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, “and we didn’t know”.
“We weren’t equipped to deal with it. Nobody had ever dealt with that. And the idea of ever losing him…” she added.
In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew revealed he became an alcoholic at the young age of 14.
Matthew became addicted to Vicodin after being involved in a jet-ski accident in 1997.
@dailymail Resurfaced video of Jennifer Anniston in tears over Matthew Perry’s struggles with substance abuse 💔🕊️ #jenniferaniston #matthewperry #chandlerbing #ripmatthewperry #fyp #friendsforever #restinparadise #friendscast ♬ apathy – Øneheart
The actor’s weight dropped as low as 128lb (58kg), and he took as many as 55 Vicodin tablets daily.
He previously admitted he couldn’t rewatch certain seasons of Friends because he didn’t recall filming any of the episodes.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer, Matthew recalled how his Friends co-star Jennifer approached him on set one day, and bluntly revealed that the entire cast “know you’re drinking”.
“Imagine how scary a moment that was,” he explained, adding that the actress helped him through his recovery.
This was especially difficult for Matthew to hear, having admitted to having a crush on Jennifer before Friends began filming in 1994.
“The time I realised I had a crush on Jennifer Aniston was way before the show started.”
“It was like two years earlier when I met her and how could you not have a crush on her,” the actor gushed.
Unfortunately for Matthew, his crush on Jennifer wasn’t reciprocated.
There was such severe indifference from her that I ended my crush,” the Chandler Bing actor continued. “I had to. So, I think I ended it in time.”
“But I thank her in the book for allowing me to look at her face for like two extra seconds than normal people would,” he joked.
“I never said anything, and I hid it, you know, the crush,” Matthew continued. “But, you know, then she married Brad Pitt, and I was like ‘I don’t think I have a chance here.’”
