Friends director James Burrows says cast were ‘destroyed’ by Matthew Perry’s death: ‘They lost a brother’

The Friends director has said the cast was left ‘devastated’ after the death of their co-star Matthew Perry.

James Burrows spoke with NBC’s Liz Kreutz for Today on Thursday, expressing his “total shock.”

Matthew died at the age of 54 after being found unconscious in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Saturday.

James told Liz in an interview: ‘I texted the girls the day we found out and destroyed them. It was a dying brother.”

He added: “It’s so sad. I want him to be remembered as a great actor, a funny man and a great friend to many people.”

Earlier this week, his castmates, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer all signed a joint statement about their late co-star Matthew, telling fans they were heartbroken by the news.

“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just castmates. We are a family,” they said People. “There is so much to say, but now we are going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.”

The stars continued: “Over time we will say more, if and when we are able to do so,” the statement continued. “For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends and everyone who loved him around the world.”

Perry famously starred as Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom, alongside Aniston as Rachel, Cox as Monica, LeBlanc as Joey, Kudrow as Phoebe and Schwimmer as Ross.

Friends, which followed the lives of six friends in their twenties living in New York, was a huge success around the world when it aired between 1994 and 2004, and reruns are still hugely popular years later.

This comes after it was revealed that there was no meth or fentanyl in Matthew Perry’s system when he drowned in a hot tub at his California home, according to initial toxicology reports.

The late Friends star was found lifeless in a hot tub outside his home in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades on Saturday. Throughout his life, Perry had been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol.

Common narcotics were not found in Perry’s system during initial testing, according to a TMZ report. But more in-depth testing is underway and should reveal whether the beloved actor had prescription drugs in his system.

When investigators went to Perry’s home, they found no illegal drugs, but did find prescription medications that were properly labeled and kept in storage bottles.

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote that after his colon exploded in 2018, he was prescribed opiates that he deemed insufficient to deal with his pain, prompting him to turn to street dealers to possibly supply him with fentanyl-laced OxyContin.

“The street pills cost about $75 a pill, so I gave the guy $3,000 a pop, many times a week,” he wrote.

After an initial investigation, the Los Angeles County coroner has delayed issuing a cause of death, which could take weeks to determine. Those who knew him claim Perry was clean and sober at the time of his death.

Perry wrote at the beginning of his million-selling memoir, “Hello, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”

On Sunday, Perry’s book hit No. 1 on Amazon, replacing Britney Spears’ memoir.

When he filmed the sitcom hit Friends in the 1990s, many people were unaware of Perry’s struggles with addiction and an intense desire to please the audience.

“Friends were huge. I couldn’t jeopardize that. I loved the script. I loved my fellow actors. I loved the scripts. “I loved everything about the show, but I struggled with my addictions, which only exacerbated my sense of shame,” he wrote in his memoir. ‘I had a secret and no one was allowed to know.

‘I felt like I was going to die if the live audience didn’t laugh, and that’s definitely not healthy. But sometimes I could say a line and the audience wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and sometimes convulse.”

Perry wrote. “If I didn’t get the laughs I should have gotten, I would panic. I felt that every night. This pressure put me in a bad place. I also knew the six people who made that show, but one of them was sick.”

He recalled in his memoir that co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his drunkenness during filming.

“I know you drink,” he recalled her telling him once. “We can smell it,” she said, in what Perry called a “kind of strange but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer.”

A fellow member of Perry’s recovery program told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview on Tuesday: ‘Matty didn’t drink. He was a big part of our AA community. He attended meetings, spoke at rallies and worked with a handful of newcomers.

“He had a sponsor and was a sponsor. He seemed to be doing well.”

The insider said the actor was focused on helping others battle addiction and had recently expressed an interest in sharing his story through public speaking.

‘Matty said he wanted to go back to the universities and talk about alcoholism. That was his gift. He could speak so well and motivate people,” the source added.

“It was important for him to reach the younger generation and spread his Don’t Give Up message. He really lived by those words.

‘He always made people laugh, even during meetings. But he was also spiritual, not religious, but spiritual. He spoke and knew this was his mission. To help other people, to give them hope.

“Matty will forever be the definition of hope because he never gave up. He turned his life around and helped countless people in the program. More than he could imagine.”

Fentanyl, a powerful opioid, is currently the deadliest drug in the US. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdose deaths increased more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021.

As of 2020, more than 100,000 deaths per year have been linked to drug overdoses, and about two-thirds of those are linked to fentanyl. The death toll is more than ten times higher than in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.

The US has taken a slew of measures to stem the flow of fentanyl entering the country. In total, the Biden administration has imposed more than 200 sanctions related to the illegal drug trade. Lawmakers nationwide are responding to the deadliest overdose crisis in U.S. history by imposing tougher penalties for fentanyl possession.