Gilmore Girls actress Lauren Graham was a lifelong friend of Matthew Perry and has opened up about his death and revealed the sweet last birthday gift she received from the Friends actor

Matthew Perry’s lifelong friend Lauren Graham has reflected on the Friends actor’s death.

The Gilmore Girls actress, who is rumoured to have dated Perry in the past, spoke about the late star during her book tour at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C. “It’s still really hard to believe,” she said of Perry’s death.

The late Chandler Bing star died in October 2023 with an autopsy finding he succumbed to the “acute effects” of ketamine. “While he was not technically ever a boyfriend, he was an almost in my life,” Graham said, describing Perry as “a friend and a constant.” Explaining their lifelong friendship she said: “We would stretch for a year, then he would come back in my life, and he had just come back in my life last year.”

Last March, Graham said the actor had sent her a “pickleball set”. Perry had loved the sport and was seen playing in the days before his death in October.

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Lauren Graham as Gaby and Matthew Perry as Oscar Madison in sitcom The Odd Couple
“He’s like really into tennis and pickleball, with a card that said, ‘Be older,’ ” she said, according to People and said his death was “a terrible loss.”

Back in 2003, the two American TV stars were romantically linked, although an official romance was never confirmed, with only flirting mentioned by Lauren. A few months after they were linked, Matthew was single again, with no apparent bad blood between the pair, and them even working together in the future.

Addressing her rumoured romance with Matthew in her memoir Talking as Fast as I Can, the actress who is best-known for playing the role of coffee-obsessed single parent Lorelai Gilmore, wrote about flirting with the Friends star. Referring to him as a false start within her memoir, she notes how the pair met at an event, where they exchanged flirtations but never took it beyond that. She said that the Chandler Bing star turned her into a “Friend Who I Almost But Never Exactly Dated or her FWIABNED.”

But despite the rife rumours of a relationship and Lauren claiming it ended at just flirting, the couple remained on good terms, and in 2008, they appeared in the indie movie Birds of America together.

Last month Perry’s ex-girlfriend and former assistant pleaded with cops to re-open the now-closed investigation into his death. In an exclusive interview with The Mirror, Perry’s ex-girlfriend Kayti Edwards said she has major concerns because of the Friends star’s history of having ‘rogue’ medical staff on his payroll giving him drugs. “It needs to be looked at again. I know when Matthew was taking 40 to 50 Vicodin in a day, he was getting it from a nurse who would bring it to his house,” Kayti told us.