Jennifer Aniston wants people to know Matthew Perry was doing well before his unexpected death.
While talking to Variety for her first interview since Perry passed away in October, Aniston was asked how she wants the world to remember her “Friends” co-star.
“As he said he’d love to be remembered,” she said, while Reese Witherspoon, her castmate on “The Morning Show,” held her hand beside her.
“He was happy. He was healthy. He had quit smoking. He was getting in shape,” Aniston added. “He was happy, that’s all I know.”
“I was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty,” she went on. “He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy.”
As Aniston wiped away tears, Witherspoon told her it was “important” to recognize that Perry was thriving.
“I want people to know he was really healthy, and getting healthy,” Aniston said. “He was on a pursuit. He worked so hard. He really was dealt a tough one. I miss him dearly. We all do. Boy, he made us laugh really hard.”
Perry was 54 when he died at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28.
He became an icon in the mid-’90s starring in “Friends” alongside Aniston, David Schimmer, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow.
The sitcom favorite struggled with sobriety during his life and chronicled his winding road to recovery in the 2022 book, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir.”