Lauren Graham is recalling some of her fondest memories of her friendship with late Friends actor Matthew Perry, five months after his tragic death aged 54.
While hosting a Q&A with fans as part of her book tour Did I Tell You So? Stories that I don’t want to forget to remember, the actress confessed that Perry’s death ‘is still very difficult to believe.’
He then told the crowd that Perry was a “constant” in his life and even alluded to a previous romantic connection.
“Even though he was never technically a boyfriend, he almost was in my life,” she told the crowd, before adding that Perry was in fact “a friend.”
He went on to describe their relationship as two friends who came in and out of each other’s lives at different times over the decades, according to People.
Lauren Graham is recalling some of her fondest memories of her friendship with late Friends actor Matthew Perry, five months after his tragic passing at age 54; seen in 2006
“We would stretch out for a year, then he would come back into my life, and he just came back into my life last year,” the former Gilmore Girls star admitted.
Graham proceeded to reveal that Perry sent him ‘a game of pickleball’ for his 56th birthday in March 2023, prompting plenty of 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) had been playing pickleball 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 shortly after 4pm on that horrific afternoon.
“She really likes tennis and pickleball, and she has a card that says, ‘Grow up,'” she said, prompting her to call his death “a terrible loss.”
Perry had once referred to Graham as “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 would play Gaby Madison in an episode of the series, which was 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 close friend,” the actor, who played the slovenly Oscar Madison opposite Thomas Lennon as the obsessively tidy Felix Unger, told fans at the panel in 2015.
In a sign of how much her friendship with Graham meant, Perry ended up using a photo of the two friends together in her best-selling 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 alluded to a previous romantic connection.
Graham played Gaby Madison opposite Perry as Oscar Madison in an episode of The Odd Couple (2015), which was the seventh film production based on the acclaimed play written by Neil Simon in 1965.
In fact, she made it a point to share how much the book’s success meant to him during her Q&A session.
“The comfort I feel in seeing him at the time I saw him was that I was very excited about the reception of his book, and not just because it was a huge success, but because his life’s work became: ‘How Can I return something? How can I talk about the struggles I had and hopefully help someone else?” he shared with his fascinated fans.
The Honolulu, Hawaii, native said Perry “was very happy” to have contributed in that way, which made him “really happy.”
Previously, Graham wrote her debut novel with Ballantine Books called Someday, Someday, Maybe (2013), which was 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, where the star reveals “stories of life, love and work 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 that I don’t want to forget to remember
While many fans know her best for her lead 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 I Said That (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 she described how much he made her laugh.
“No one made me laugh that much. Just tears, streaming,” he confessed on CBS Mornings. “There was great joy in being around him and being his friend.”