Jennifer Aniston's Emotional Interview About Matthew Perry's Addiction Resurfaces
Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, and David Schwimmer
In the wake of Matthew Perry's shocking and untimely death at just 54 years old, a 2004 interview between Diane Sawyer and Jennifer Aniston is making the rounds again.
His Friends co-star sat down with the journalist around the conclusion of the series, which wrapped up a 10-year run the same year. During their conversation, she was overcome with emotion while discussing her late colleague, as Sawyer brought up Perry's history with addiction.
After dropping her head into her hands and pushing back tears, Aniston said somberly, "We didn't know. We...weren't equipped...to deal with it. You know, nobody had ever dealt with that and...the idea of even losing him," she trailed off, pressing a tissue to her eyes. "He's having a [rough] road, but he is alright," she added.
The Friends star and mental health advocate was found dead at his home on Oct. 28 after an apparent drowning in his jacuzzi. Police found no evidence of foul play on the scene, but an official cause of death is still pending—and may remain unknown for several weeks as the medical examiner awaits the results of his toxicology reports.
Perry previously revealed that Aniston was the first to reach out to him amid the height of his addiction, and became the one to check in on him the most frequently.
"Imagine how scary a moment that was," Perry said during his sit-down with Sawyer ahead of the release of his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. "We know you were drinking," Aniston said the first time she called, stunning him—he thought he'd been hiding it well, but the rest of the cast could smell the liquor on his breath.
Eventually, other members of the cast and crew would file into his dressing room and try to stage an intervention, which he found a way around.
Though he couldn't address his addiction at the time, years later, he said, "I'm really grateful to her for that." In his memoir, he compared the whole group of them to penguins, writing, "In nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguins group around it and prop it up until it's better." That's what his Friends costars did for him.
Next: 'Friends' Stars Open Up About Losing Matthew Perry for the First Time: 'Utterly Devastated'
