She was there for him. Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston met long before they took on the roles of Chandler Bing and Rachel Green on “Friends.”
The pair met through mutual acquaintances about three years before the NBC comedy — and Perry was upfront about his feelings early on.
“I was immediately taken by her (how could I not be?) and liked her,” Perry shared in his 2022 memoir. “And I got the sense she was intrigued too—maybe it was going to be something.”
However, the actress gently turned him down after he was a bit overzealous calling her after he booked two gigs in one day.
“‘You’re the first person I wanted to tell this to!’” he recalled telling her.
“Bad idea—I could feel ice forming through the phone,” Perry continued. “Looking back, it was clear that this made her think I liked her too much, or in the wrong kind of way…and I only compounded the error by then asking her out. She declined (which made it very difficult to actually go out with her), but said that she’d love to be friends with me, and I compounded the compound by blurting, ‘We can’t be friends!’”
Perry’s crush would continue when they kicked off filming “Friends” in 1994.
“Fairly early in the making of ‘Friends’ I realized that I was still crushing badly on Jennifer Aniston,” he wrote. “Our hellos and goodbyes became awkward. And then I’d ask myself, ‘How long can I look at her? Is three seconds too long?’”
“At first it was like, she would walk in, I’d be like, ‘Hey, good to see you.’ And then I’d go to my dressing room and just go, ‘Oh, I’ll never be able to be with her,’” he remembered. “But how can you not have a crush on Jennifer Aniston, you know? But I did at one point just go, ‘All right, that’s enough.’”
He added: “Fortunately, even though I was still attracted to her and thought she was so great, that first day we were able to sail right past the past and focus on the fact that we had both gotten the best job Hollywood had to offer.”
Perry’s feelings did eventually wear off, as he joked that it was mainly because of Aniston’s “deafening lack of interest.” But the pair instead grew an unbreakable bond, with Perry revealing that it was Aniston who “reached out the most” amid his years-long drug and alcohol addition.
The “Morning Show” actress was also the co-star who confronted him about his drinking on set.
“I’m really grateful to her for that,” he told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer while promoting his memoir in Oct. 2022.
In 2004, ahead of the series finale of “Friends” after 10 years of working together, Aniston broke down in tears discussing Perry during a sit-down with Sawyer. At the time, she was asked what each cast mate “didn’t know” about themselves.
“That he’s alright,” she said of what she hoped he knew about himself.
In a voiceover, Sawyer chimed in: “Perry has had a tough battle with addiction. When it hit, his fellow actors tried, but didn’t know how to help.”
“He struggled,” Aniston went on. “We didn’t know. We weren’t equipped to deal with it. Nobody had ever dealt with that. And the idea of even losing him … he’s having a road. But he’s alright.”
Perry died of an apparent drowning in his hot tub at his California home late last month. He was 54. His cause of death is “deferred” as more tests were ordered, including for toxicology.
In exclusive photos obtained by The Post, Aniston — along with Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer — were spotted at Forest Lawn Church of the Hills in Los Angeles on Friday for a gathering presumed to be a funeral service for their late co-star.
“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family,” the cast said in a joint statement following his passing. “There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss. In time we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.”