Lisa Kudrow discovered a touching message she found from ‘Friends’ co-star Matthew Perry

In 2023, we lost one of the world’s great comic actors and someone who felt like a friend to us all, Matthew Perry. It would seem that, though he has gone, his antics haven’t, as his Friends‘ co-star, Lisa Kudrow, recently discovered by way of an old cookie jar.

Kudrow and Perry were two of the stars of the hit sitcom Friends alongside Jennifer Anniston, Courtney Cox, David Schwimmer, and Matt Le Blanc. Sadly, last year, Perry passed away in his home in California after years of struggling with a drug addiction. The news shocked and saddened many, including his Friends co-stars who released a joint statement a day after his death which read, “We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family.” The cast worked together on Friends for 10 years between 1994 to 2004.

In a recent interview on The Drew Barrymore Show, Kudrow revealed that she had discovered something Matthew had left her way back when Friends ended. When asked whether she had ever taken anything from a film or television set she said she didn’t want to name exact props, which led Barrymore to ponder the fate of the Friends cookie jar. Kudrow responded:

“Matthew gave that to me at the end of our last episode. I had recently found the note that he had in it for me. I hadn’t opened it up or looked inside of it. But yeah, he did. He had a note in there and I forgot about it…Timing is everything.”

The actress did not go into the specifics of what Perry had written for her on that note.

Laughter lives on

Along with the joint statement, Kudrow also shared a photo on Instagram of herself with Perry at the NBC Upfronts having just filmed the “Friends” pilot. She wrote, “Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face EVERY DAY.” To have posthumously found a note from Perry must have felt quite emotional indeed. For years Kudrow admitted that she hadn’t watched the show since it finished because she didn’t want to watch it and end up not liking it. However, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2024 she admitted to having started watching it to keep the memory of Perry alive.

“Honestly, I wasn’t able to watch it because it’s too embarrassing to watch yourself. But if I make it about Matthew, then that’s OK. And it’s just celebrating how hilarious he was — and that is what I want to remember.”

As a Friends fan myself, rewatching the show has been a little different since Perry’s death, but he still makes me laugh—even if it is the seventh time I’ve watched the series!