Lauren Graham is recalling some of her fondest memories from her friendship with the late Friends actor Matthew Perry – five months after he tragically passed away at the age of 54.
While hosting a Q&A with fans as part of her book tour for Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Want to Remember, the actress confessed that Perry’s death is “still very hard to believe.”
She then told the crowd that Perry was a “constant” in her life and even referenced a previous romantic connection.
“Even though he was never technically a boyfriend, he was almost in my life,” she told the audience, before adding that Perry was, in fact, “a friend.”
She went on to describe their relationship as two friends who would come in and out of each other’s lives at different times over the decades. People.
Lauren Graham recalls some of her fondest memories from her friendship with the late Friends actor Matthew Perry – five months after he tragically passed away at the age of 54; seen in 2006
“We would stretch it out for a year, then he would come back into my life, and he had just come back into my life last year,” the former Gilmore Girls lead actress admitted.
Graham then revealed that Perry sent her “a pickleball set” for her 56th birthday in March 2023, which brought many smiles and laughter from the audience.
It turns out that the man best known to fans for playing the role of Chandler Bing on Friends (1994-2004) was playing pickleball earlier the day he died and then returned to his Los Angeles home to rest in his hot tub.
He was eventually found unconscious in his hot tub and pronounced dead just after 4pm that terrifying afternoon.
“He really enjoys tennis and pickleball, with a card that says, ‘Be older,’” she said, leading her to call his death “a terrible loss.”
Perry had once called Graham “one of my favorite people” during a question-and-answer session he hosted for his sitcom The Odd Couple (2015-2017), which ran for three seasons on CBS.
Graham was set to play Gaby Madison in an episode of the series, the seventh film production based on the 1965 play written by Neil Simon.
“We have great chemistry when we work together and it’s fun to work with a good friend,” the actor, who played the sloppy Oscar Madison opposite Thomas Lennon as the obsessively tidy Felix Unger, told fans on the panel in 2015 .
In a sign of how much his friendship with Graham meant, Perry eventually used a photo of the two friends together in his hugely successful memoir Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing (2022).
While hosting a Q&A with fans, the actress confessed that Perry’s death is “still very hard to believe” and even hinted at a previous romantic connection.
Graham played Gaby Madison opposite Perry as Oscar Madison in an episode of The Odd Couple (2015), the seventh film production based on the critically acclaimed play written by Neil Simon in 1965.
In fact, she made a point during her Q&A to talk about how much the book’s success meant to him
‘The comfort I take from having seen him at the time I saw him was that he was so pleased with the way his book was received – and not just because it was a great success, but because his life’s work became a kind of: ‘How can I do that? return? How can I talk about the struggles I’ve had and hopefully help someone else?'” she shared with captivated fans.
The Honolulu, Hawaii, resident claimed that Perry was “so happy” to have contributed in that way, which made him “very happy.”
Previously, Graham wrote her debut novel with Ballantine Books called Someday, Someday, Maybe (2013), a fictionalization of her experiences trying to become an actress in New York City in the 1990s.
She turned a collection of personal essays into another New York Times bestseller with Talking As Fast As I Can, in which the starlet reveals “stories about life, love and working as a woman in Hollywood,” according to Google books.
The former Gilmore Girls star made the comments about Perry while on tour for her latest book, Have I Told You This Already? Stories I don’t want to forget
Although she is best known to many fans for her starring role in Gilmore Girls (2000-2007), Graham’s Hollywood resume also includes films such as Sweet November (2001), Bad Santa (2003), The Pacifier (2005), Because I Said So (2007), Evan Almighty (2007), as well as the series Parenthood (2010-2015) and Vampirina (2017-2021).
In an interview last November, about a month after Perry’s death, Graham gushed about her late friend as he described how much he made her laugh.
‘No one has made me laugh so hard. Just tears, flowing,” she admitted on CBS Mornings. “It was such a joy to be around him and be his friend.”