Photo: Donato Sardella/WireImage for Lollipop Theater Network
Lisa Kudrow’s tribute to her Friends co-star Matthew Perry brought it back to square one. “I shot the pilot, Friends Like Us, then was immediately picked up, we were at the NBC Upfronts,” she wrote. “Then…you suggested we play poker AND it was so much fun that we got to know each other well at first. Thanks for that.” At Perry’s suggestion, the cast played a lot of poker together, so much so that it inspired the episode “The One With All the Poker.” From the start, the closeness of the Friends cast was one of the show’s biggest selling points. “I can The best way to describe it is as if after the show, at a party or some other social gathering, one of us bumped into each other, then that was it,” Perry said in HBO Max’s reunion special. “That was the end of the night. You just sat with the person all night and that was it.”
Kudrow went on to thank Perry for everything he gave during Friends’ 10 years, “the best 10 years a person could have,” as she put it. “Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said that my muscles ached and tears streamed down my face EVERY DAY. Thank you for your open heart in a six-way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of “talking”.
“Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t feeling well and then being absolutely brilliant,” she wrote. “Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for everything I have learned about GRACE and LOVE from knowing you. Thank you for the time I was able to spend with you, Matthew.”