Friends Creators Reflect on 30th Anniversary, Matthew Perry’s Death

The 30th anniversary of Friends‘ premiere is a bittersweet one following the death of Matthew Perry.

“It’s a huge loss and it does make the 30th a little fraught,” cocreator Marta Kauffman said in a segment aired on the Friday, September 20 episode of Today. Her fellow cocreator, David Crane, added: “He made us laugh every day.”

Kauffman, 67, noted that “David always said [Matthew] was the funniest man in a room.”

Perry famously played sweetly sarcastic Chandler Bing on all 10 seasons of Friends from 1994 to 2004. The NBC sitcom — which also starred Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc — followed the lives of a group of six friends living in New York City.

Perry died at age 54 in October 2023 of the acute effects of ketamine. Last month, five people were arrested in connection to his death, including his former personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, two doctors, an acquaintance of Perry’s and Jasveen Sangha (a.k.a. the “Ketamine Queen”).

“He’d been fighting the good fight for so long, and it did really like, from the reunion, that he had finally found some peace,” Friends executive producer Kevin Bright said on Today, referring to the HBO Max’s 2021 Friends reunion special.

Reflecting on the beloved TV show, Kauffman recalled how Perry and his costars’ chemistry was clear from the very start. “When the six of them got onstage together, I literally got a chill up my spine and thought, ‘This is special,’” she stated.

In the years since Friends’ 2004 season finale, the show’s legacy has reached younger audiences thanks to syndication and streaming. “You have pre-teens coming up to you, telling you how much they love your show, and asking you, ‘Will there be more episodes?’” Bright, 69, shared.

The idea of a revival is something Kauffman told Today she gets emails about “all the time.” She said: “And everybody has a ‘great idea,’ and the ‘great idea’ is their kids grown-up doing a Friends show.”

Several of the show’s characters were the parents to young kids on the show, including Chandler and Monica (Cox), who welcomed twins in the two-part series finale. However, the idea of following the next generation of Friends is not something the creators are interested in.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Crane, 67, stated.

Aniston, 55, got choked up while talking about Friends’ 30th anniversary during a Variety Actors on Actors conversation with Quinta Brunson earlier this year. “Oh, God, don’t make me cry,” she stated before taking a second to regroup. “It’s so strange to think that it’s even 30 years old. I remember the day it was going to premiere on television, on NBC.”

Aniston went on to share a memory of herself and Perry from the day of the show’s premiere in 1994. “Me and Matthew Perry were having lunch somewhere and we knew Lisa was getting her hair colored, so we ran into the hair salon,” she recalled. “And I snuck up and she was in the sink, the hair bowl, and I took the nozzle and just started washing her hair from the guy that was supposed to be doing it. And it definitely flew out of control and that was unfortunate.”

She went on to note that the Friends premiere “feels like yesterday,” adding, “The fact that it’s had this long, wonderful life and it still means a lot to people is one of the greatest gifts I think all five of us, all six of us, we never could imagine. … It’s a family forever.”