Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston just came out with an unexpected, wistful comment about her “Friends” co-star Matthew Perry’s death: Part of her, she said, thinks it might be “better” for him that he died.

“We did everything we could when we could,” the “Morning Show” star said in an interview published Monday by Vanity Fair, talking about Perry’s friends’ attempts to help him when he was struggling with addiction. “But it almost felt like we’d been mourning Matthew for a long time because his battle with that disease was a really hard one for him to fight.”

Indeed, Perry discussed his friends’ efforts to help him in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” which recounted his decades-long struggles with substance abuse as well as his numerous recovery efforts.

“Although he asserts he was never high while filming ‘Friends,’ he’d often be sick or hungover,” former staff writer Christina Veta wrote in The Times’ review of the memoir. “Once, Perry passed out on the Central Perk couch and [co-star Matt] LeBlanc had to nudge him awake to say his line. Later, Aniston called him out for drinking again, telling him, ‘We can smell it.’”

Perry told Aniston, “I know I’m drinking too much, but I don’t exactly know what to do about it.”

“In nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguins group around it and prop it up until it’s better,” he wrote in his memoir. “This is what my costars on Friends did for me. There were times on set when I was extremely hungover, and Jen and Courteney [Cox], being devoted to cardio as a cure-all, had a Lifecycle exercise bike installed backstage. In between rehearsals and takes, I’d head back there and ride that thing like the fires of hell were chasing me — anything to get my brain power back to normal. I was the injured penguin, but I was determined to not let these wonderful people, and this show, down.”

Aniston told Vanity Fair in the new interview, “looking solemn and out toward the ocean” as she spoke about Perry’s death, “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better. I’m glad he’s out of that pain.”

Perry said in his memoir that amid all his drinking and drug use, he was never suicidal.

“In the back of my mind I always had some semblance of hope. But, if dying was a consequence of getting to take the quantity of drugs I needed, then death was something I was going to have to accept,” he wrote about the period after “Friends” ended.

“That’s how skewed my thinking had become — I was able to hold those two things in my mind at the same time: I don’t want to die, but if I have to in order to get sufficient drugs on board, then amen to oblivion.”

Almost exactly a year after the memoir came out, on Oct. 28, 2024, at 4 in the afternoon, Perry was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home. The drug ketamine would later emerge as his official cause of death, with drowning a contributing factor.

The twins who played Ross and Rachel’s baby on Friends have shared where they are now 22 years after the iconic show ended – and they’ve gone down very different career paths

The unforgettable episodes of Friends that took us on an emotional journey with Ross and Rachel, played by David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston. The couple who were famously ‘on a break’ and each other’s ‘lobsters’, also brought us the joy of baby Emma Geller-Green.

Twin sisters Athena Conley and Alexandra Conley were just six months old when they took on the role of the beloved baby from the end of season 8 through season 9. So what actually happened to the actresses who played the tiny tot?

Fast forward to today, and the twins are now 23 years old and thriving. And they look part on their sitcom experience very fondly.

Hailing from Long Beach, California, the sisters landed the part after their mother learned of the audition through a friend in a twins club.

In an interview with People, Athena revealed: “So she told my mom about it and she was like, ‘You should just take your daughters to L.A. just for one day.’ And it wasn’t far from us at all, so she did.”

After having their photos taken at the audition, the twins and their mother were on their way out when they received the news that they had been cast.

They went on to appear in 10 episodes, before being replaced as the show required an older actress to portray Emma as she grew.

Alexandra opened up to People, revealing: “It’s actually crazy because growing up, I always just knew I was on Friends, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

“It didn’t hit me, I think until like maybe like middle school or even like early high school, how big that was.”

The twins have since become “obsessed” with the iconic sitcom and are regular viewers.

Despite their early brush with fame, they’ve stepped back from acting to focus on their new careers as recent university graduates.

Alexandra has made Los Angeles her home, where she’s carving out a career in social media and marketing for a cosmetics company. Her Instagram is a vibrant collage of travel snapshots and snippets of social gatherings with mates.

She’s also quite the dancer, often teaming up with her sister for dance videos. Alexandra’s influence extends to a collaboration with Kim Kardashian’s Skims, which she promotes on her TikTok account.

Athena, on the other hand, has settled in Denver and seems to be thriving in her busy life.

Her professional path has led her to a role as an investment control reconciler at a financial firm. Impressively, she’s also a cheerleader for the NFL’s Denver Broncos.

Alexandra doesn’t hold back in expressing her admiration for Athena, proudly supporting her from the stands and declaring herself her sister’s number one fan.