On Wednesday, Lisa Kudrow became the last of the surviving core Friends cast to pay homage to Matthew Perry, who tragically passed away on Oct. 28 at age 54. Her tribute follows her co-stars Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, and Jennifer Aniston, who have each penned farewells over the past two days.
Taking to Instagram, Kudrow shared a throwback photo of her and Perry at a party. In the caption she wrote, “Shot the pilot, Friends Like Us, got picked up then immediately, we were at the NBC Upfronts. Then…You suggested we play poker AND made it so much fun while we initially bonded. Thank you for that. Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face EVERY DAY.”
“Thank you for your open heart in a six way relationship that required compromise,” Kudrow continued. “And a lot of ‘talking.’ Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then, being completely brilliant. Thank you for the best 10 years a person gets to have. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for all I learned about GRACE and LOVE through knowing you. Thank you for the time I got to have with you, Matthew.”
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In his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, released last year, Perry wrote that throughout the entirety of Friends, he was suffering from a debilitating addiction to painkillers and alcohol that made turning in his performances more difficult.
Perry wrote that his problem was so acute, his fans would be able to clock what substance he was abusing at the time by how his character, Chandler, looked onscreen: “When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills; when I have a goatee, it’s a lot of pills.”
Kudrow and her co-stars’s individual statements and tributes follow a previously shared joint statement following Perry’s death from the five members of the Friends cast. “We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just castmates. We are a family,” their statement read. “There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.”
