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Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman said Matthew Perry “was sober” and “in a really good place” when she last spoke to him two weeks before his death.
In an interview on Today with co-creator David Crane, Kauffman recalled her final conversation with the actor, who died Oct. 28. “It was great,” she said. “He was happy and chipper. He didn’t seem weighed down by anything. He was in a really good place, which is why this seems so unfair.”
Later, Kauffman recalled her concerns about Perry’s health and addiction struggles when she saw him at the 2021 Friends reunion. Perry had undergone surgery and had been prescribed opioids for pain, and as Kauffman put it, “the cycle starts over again… I was concerned about what point in the cycle was in that moment.”
But that apprehension was totally gone when Kauffman last spoke to Perry. “He seemed better than I had seen in a while,” she said. “I was so thrilled to see that. He was emotionally in a good place, he looked good, he quit smoking… He learned things throughout this, and what he learned more than anything is that he wants to help other addicts. And it gave him purpose.”
Perry’s ostensible good health at that moment, Kauffman admitted, was a major reason why the news of his death was such a shock. “My first impulse was to text him, honestly,” she said. “And then deep sadness. It’s hard to grasp. You know, one minute he’s here and happy, and then poof. And doing good in the world. Really doing good in the world.”
At one point in the interview, Crane was asked about a comment Perry once made that people would be shocked by his death but not surprised. Crane said that was “probably true,” adding: “Given the journey he’d been on, and we were all aware of it, there was always a part that was kind of bracing for something like this. But it is still hard to believe because he was such a sort of alive person that it’s hard to believe he’s not here.”
Perry died of an apparent drowning at his home in Los Angeles, but an official cause of death hasn’t yet been announced and is still being investigated. It’s unclear when the results will be released, but reports suggest it could take the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office weeks to complete a toxicology screening and examine other evidence. Police in L.A. are also investigating due to Perry’s celebrity, though they’ve already said they do not suspect foul play.
