‘Friends’ co-creator Marta Kauffman suggests the two best ways to honor Matthew Perry
Matthew Perry participating in the BUILD Speaker Series to discuss the mini-series 'The Kennedys After Camelot' in New York in March 2017.
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman is sharing what she thinks are the best ways to honor late actor Matthew Perry.
Kauffman said two ways “come to mind” about how to celebrate Perry, who detailed his decades-long struggles with drug addiction in his 2022 memoir and died last year due to a Ketamine overdose. One is to donate to drug and treatment centers.
“Let’s fight this disease,” Kauffman said in an interview with The Times of London published on Friday.
The second way, Kauffman added, “is to watch ‘Friends’ and remember him not as a man who died like that but as a man who was hilariously funny and brought joy to everybody.”
Perry played the quick-witted, beloved Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom, which also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc from 1994 to 2004.
Perry died in October 2023 at 54.
He was found floating face down in a jacuzzi at his Pacific Palisades home. According to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office autopsy report, Perry died as a result of “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning.
On Thursday the US Attorney’s Office announced at a news conference in Los Angeles that five people were charged in connection with Perry’s death.
Investigators said they uncovered an underground network of drug sellers and suppliers they allege are responsible for distributing the ketamine and that they believe Perry “fell back into addiction” last fall.
The defendants, according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office, include two doctors, Perry’s personal live-in assistant, and a person referred to by authorities as “The Ketamine Queen.”
“He is the one I had the most contact with,” Kauffman told The Times. “About two weeks before [he died] he and I were FaceTiming and he seemed really good.”
It is unclear if Kauffman’s comments to The Times, which were part of a feature that celebrated 30 years of “Friends,” were made before or after news of the indictments were made public last week.
CNN on Thursday reached out to representatives for the cast of “Friends” for comment.
In November, Aniston remembered Perry in a tribute posted to her Instagram page, where she, like Kauffman, honored her friend for how much he made everybody laugh.
“As he said himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’ he thought he was going to die,” she wrote. “His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that.”
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CNN’s Scott Glover, John Miller and Lisa Respers France contributed to this report.
