‘Friends’ Creators Say 30th Anniversary Is “A Little Fraught” in Wake of Matthew Perry Death

Matthew Perry in ‘Friends.’ Courtesy of Everett Collection

The 30th anniversary of Friends on Sunday, Sept. 22, comes as fans and those who worked on the show continue to mourn star Matthew Perry, who died less than a year ago from the acute effects of the anesthetic ketamine. More recently, new information about Perry’s use of ketamine in his final days has surfaced as those who allegedly helped him obtain the drug have been arrested and charged.

And the creators of the hit NBC sitcom, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, as well as executive producer Kevin S. Bright are aware of how Perry’s death has cast a pall over what would otherwise be a celebratory time.

“It’s a huge loss and it does make the 30th a little fraught,” Kauffman said in an interview with Crane and Bright that aired on Friday’s Today show, as Bright added, “He made us laugh every day.”

Looking back on Perry’s heavily publicized struggles with addiction and how he’d seemed to be doing better in the years prior to his death, Bright said. “He’d been fighting the good fight for so long, and it really did feel like, from the [2021 cast] reunion on, that he had finally found some peace.”

Shortly after Perry’s death, as those who knew and loved the Friends star paid tribute to him, Kauffman told Today that she had spoken with Perry two weeks before he died and the actor was “happy and chipper. He didn’t seem weighed down by anything. He was in a really good place, which is why this seems so unfair.”

“He seemed better than I had seen in a while,” she said at the time. “I was so thrilled to see that. He was emotionally in a good place. He looked good. He quit smoking. Yes, he was sober. He learned things throughout this and what he learned more than anything is that he wants to help other addicts, and it gave him purpose.”

Over the summer, though, five people were indicted and charged in an investigation into Perry’s death, which unearthed a “broad underground criminal network.”

In a separate interview tied to the anniversary, for the U.K.’s Times, but conducted before the recent wave of arrests were made in connection with Perry’s death, Kauffman and Crane spoke about Perry’s struggles with addiction.

“By the time we became aware of it, we were already a family on a lot of levels,” Crane said. “There was a point where we said to him: ‘Do you want to stop [being in the show]?’ And he was adamantly like: ‘No, this is really important to me.’”

Kaufmann meanwhile, echoing what she told Today last year of speaking with Perry via FaceTime “about two weeks before” he died when Perry “seemed really good,” spoke about how she hoped fans remembered one of the show’s beloved stars.

“Two things come to mind [about how to celebrate him]: one of them is to donate to drug treatment centers — let’s fight the disease,” she said. “And the second way 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.”

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