Why Jennifer Aniston Says She Mourned Matthew Perry Long Before His Death
I’m Kai Montgomery, and yes, I’m grumpy, but someone has to state the obvious before everyone else spins it into a headline. Fine: celebrities are human, addiction is brutal, and grief can begin long before a funeral.
Jennifer Aniston told Vanity Fair on August 11 that she and her Friends costars did everything they could to help Matthew Perry during his long fight with addiction, and that she felt like they had been mourning him “for a long time.” Perry, who played Chandler Bing, candidly wrote about his decades-long struggle with drugs and alcohol in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, where he noted that Aniston “was the one who reached out the most” during his attempts at sobriety. Yes, she intervened, yes, she cared, and yes, the pain of watching someone you love self-destruct is a slow, living grief.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Perry had documented ups and downs that were public and private. He had been sober for 18 months when that memoir came out, but tragically died in October 2023 at age 54 from the acute effects of ketamine. Aniston’s comments reflect a complicated blend of relief and sorrow: relief that his pain may finally be over and sorrow for the long battle that preceded his death. She said she’s “glad he’s out of that pain,” which reads as a reluctant, weary sort of solace rather than a tidy emotional bow.
Other Friends members echoed the same exhausted tenderness. Courteney Cox marked the first anniversary of Perry’s death with a photo of the five of them hugging and a simple “Miss you today. And always.” Aniston likewise shared on Instagram, posting vintage set photos and a dove and healed heart emoji to honor him. These gestures are small, public ways to register private mourning that had apparently been happening for years.
The actor’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, also offered haunting details on Today, describing Perry’s final period as strangely reflective. She recalled a moment when he told her he loved her and seemed unusually content while showing a new house—language that in hindsight felt like a premonition. Morrison said that there was “an inevitability to what was going to happen next,” suggesting she sensed the fragility he’d been wrestling with for years.
Let’s inject some clear thinking here: addiction is not an open-and-shut case of wanting help or refusing it. Even close friends intervening and his own attempts at sobriety did not guarantee a different outcome. Aniston’s reflection—that they had been mourning him already—captures something many loved ones of addicts know painfully well. You grieve the “what ifs” and the parts of the person that are lost to illness long before the body is gone.
This isn’t melodrama; it’s grief with receipts. The memoir, the public words, the interviews and the Instagram tributes all corroborate a story where care was present and where the illness ultimately prevailed. Aniston’s weary compassion, Cox’s quiet post, and Morrison’s recollection form a small chorus that confirms the long decline was seen and felt by those closest to Perry.
What to watch next: more reflections and possibly posthumous releases or interviews that add texture to Perry’s final years. Expect ongoing conversations about addiction, celebrity, and accountability, because the public never tires of parsing tragedy for lessons.
Closing wisdom, because you needed it: grief can start as a slow burn, not a sudden inferno. That’s the part people who don’t live this life fail to notice. There, I said it. Moving on.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and Vanity Fair, E! News, Today
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
