Jennifer Aniston’s four-word warning to her Friends co-star Matthew Perry amid his alcohol addiction has resurfaced following his sudden death.
The world has been shocked by Perry’s untimely death this weekend after he was found dead in the hot tub of his LA home, with many rushing to pay their respects to the beloved actor.
Perry rose to fame for his role as Chandler Bing in the hit ’90s sitcom Friends alongside Jennifer and Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc And David Schwimmer.
And last year the actor revealed that he and Jennifer had remained in each other’s lives and kept in close contact.
“She was the one who reached out to us the most,” the star said of the actress who played Rachel Green during an interview in October 2022. “You know, I’m very grateful to her for that.”
Pals: Jennifer Aniston’s four-word warning to her Friends co-star Matthew Perry amid his alcohol addiction has resurfaced following his sudden death (Jennifer and Matthew seen in 1995)
Iconic: Perry rose to fame for his role as Chandler Bing on the hit ’90s sitcom Friends, alongside Jennifer, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer
Perry went on to reveal that it was Aniston who first confronted him about his addictions during the filming of their hit sitcom, when the symptoms were just too obvious to ignore.
“We know you drink,” Aniston, now 54, told Perry at the time in the four-word warning, during a break during the filming of Friends when it was hugely popular with fans.
“Yeah, imagine how scary that was,” the actor said of his co-star during the conversation with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.
“I should have been the toast of the town, but I was in a dark room with nothing but drug dealers and I was all alone,” he would add, referring to his addiction.
When opening up about his substance abuse and the toll it began to take on his body, The Whole Nine Yards star confessed that he was taking as many as 55 Vicodin pills a day, which helped drop his weight to just 128 pounds.
“I didn’t know how to quit,” Perry admitted in an interview with People last year, before sharing an analogy that explains the power drugs and alcohol had over him at the height of his TV career.
“If the police came to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’ll take you to jail,’ I’d start packing. I couldn’t stop because the disease and addiction are progressive. So it gets worse as you get older,” he explained.
In his own mind, Perry thought he was doing a great job hiding his drug and alcohol use from his co-stars, but at some point they all knew he was in trouble and did their best to support him.
Words: Perry previously revealed that it was Aniston who first confronted him about his addictions during filming when the symptoms were too obvious to ignore (seen during Friends: The Reunion in May 2021)
Aid: ‘We know you drink,’ Aniston, now 54, told Perry at the time in the four-word warning, during a break in the filming of Friends
“(They) were understanding and they were patient,” he recalled of the Friends cast. ‘It looks like penguins. When penguins in nature are sick or seriously injured, the other penguins surround him and support him. They walk around it until the penguin can walk on its own. That’s pretty much what the cast did for me.”
For a while, Perry thought he could hide behind his infectious humor and continue his life on the wings of Friends’ success.
“I thought if I was funny all the time I could get through it,” he said. “I thought (Friends) would solve everything. That didn’t happen.’
Perry would eventually get clean and sober in 2001, but according to his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing, he estimated he relapsed “60 or 70 times” over the years.
Along the way, he spent a lot of time in rehabilitation centers and battled a number of serious health issues, including a five-month hospital stay in 2018 after his colon ruptured due to opioid overuse.
He was given only a two percent chance of living at one point in the hospital, Perry admitted in the memoir, but he would ultimately survive.
‘I am a very grateful man. I’m grateful to be alive, that’s for sure. And that gives me the opportunity to do anything,” he said with clear emotion during the 2022 People interview.
Perry went on to reveal that part of his inspiration for writing an open and honest memoir, with all the ups and downs, was the hope that his stories could serve as a kind of lifeline for others, like Aniston was for him.
Perry died “after drowning in his jacuzzi at home,” sources told DailyMail.com.
Lifeline: The actor revealed that part of his inspiration for writing his 2022 memoir – Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing – was the hope that his stories could serve as a kind of lifeline for others, as Aniston did for was him.
Tragic: Perry died at 54 ‘after drowning in his jacuzzi at home,’ sources told DailyMail.com; seen in 2022
Creepy: In his latest Instagram post, posted earlier this week, the star shared images of him in his pool
Law enforcement sources said the actor was found Saturday in a Los Angeles home after first responders were called to the scene for cardiac arrest around 4 p.m. (PDT).
Sources said he was found in a jacuzzi at the house, but no drugs were discovered at the scene – and there was no evidence of foul play.
He reportedly played a two-hour game of Pickleball before his death, after which he sent his assistant out on an errand. When they returned, the deputy found Perry unresponsive and called 911.
A source told the newspaper there was no sign of foul play and that robbery-homicide detectives are investigating his death.