Matthew Perry received a special tribute during the In Memoriam segment at the 2023 Emmy Awards.
Charlie Puth was joined by The War and Treaty to perform on Monday, January 15, while photos of the celebrities who died in 2023 flashed across the screen. The group started out by singing Puth and Wiz Khalifa‘s “See You Again” before transitioning into The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You.”
Friends fans are very familiar with the track, which served as the theme song for Perry’s hit sitcom throughout its entire run from 1994 to 2004. Perry was the last celebrity to appear in the slideshow, to loud applause from the audience.
Perry — who played Chandler Bing on Friends — died on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54 due to “acute effects of ketamine.”
“Matthew, it is with a heavy heart I say goodbye. The times we had together are honestly among the favorite times of my life,” Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey Tribbiani in the NBC sitcom, wrote via Instagram in November 2023. “It was an honor to share the stage with you and to call you my friend. I will always smile when I think of you and I’ll never forget you. Never. Spread your wings and fly brother you’re finally free. Much love. And I guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me.”
Courteney Cox, who played Chandler’s friend-turned-wife Monica Geller on Friends, reflected on their friendship in an emotional social media post.
“I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day,” she wrote via Instagram in November 2023. “When you work with someone as closely as I did with Matthew, there are thousands of moments I wish I could share. For now, here’s one of my favorites.”
Cox, 59, shared a clip from a season 4 episode in which Monica and Chandler first sleep together while in London for Ross Geller’s (David Schwimmer) wedding.
“To give a little backstory, Chandler and Monica were supposed to have a one-night fling in London. But because of the audience’s reaction, it became the beginning of their love story,” she explained at the time. “In this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say. He often did things like that. He was funny and he was kind. 🤍🕊️.”
Days after Cox’s post, fellow costar Jennifer Aniston opened up about the love she had for Perry.
“Oh, boy, this one has cut deep,” Aniston, 54, wrote via Instagram at the time. “Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before. We all experience loss at some point in our lives. Loss of life or loss of love. Being able to really SIT in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be.”
Aniston, who played Rachel Green on Friends, continued: “For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’ he thought he was going to die. His life literally depended on it. And boy, did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard. In the last couple weeks, I’ve been pouring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again. I’ll keep them forever and ever. I found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. It says it all.”
The actress shared sweet messages between her and Perry.
“Making you laugh just made my day. It made my day :),” Perry texted Aniston, alongside a photo of them together. She replied, “Awwww the first of THOUSANDS of times …”
