Jennifer Aniston ‘dreaded’ Matthew Perry’s death for years, ‘kept to herself’ at funeral

Aniston and her 'Friends' castmates gathered Friday to pay their final respects to Perry, but Aniston mostly kept to herself during the one-hour service.

Jennifer Aniston was reportedly one of the first people to arrive outside the venue for Matthew Perry’s funeral last week, but she mostly “kept to herself” once she and the other mourners went inside.

The image of 54-year-old Aniston playing a solitary figure at Perry’s service, even though she was surrounded by their beloved “Friends” co-stars, gives weight to reports that she’s having a particularly hard time coming to terms with his sudden death. Perry, who once admitted he had a crush on Aniston, died unexpectedly on Oct. 28 at the age 54 of an apparent drowning at his Los Angeles-area home.

It’s an outcome that Aniston “dreaded” for 20 years,” a friend told The Daily Mail. Perry was open about struggling with addiction to alcohol and drugs, suffering multiple relapses, stints in rehab and dire health consequences.

“It doesn’t matter whether he died as a result of a freak accident or whether it was directly connected to his drug issues, this was a day that Jennifer has dreaded coming for 20 years,” a friend told the Daily Mail. “She always wanted to help Matthew any way she could – that was a constant for her.”

Jen's grief over the day she dreaded for 20 years: Aniston was 'one of the first to arrive' at Matthew Perry's funeral and 'kept to herself'
https://t.co/f06ZG0W6Wo pic.twitter.com/BHsQr8bLAw

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) November 4, 2023

When a struggling Perry managed to join his “Friends” castmates for a reunion special in 2021, Aniston “genuinely thought his worst days were behind him,” the friend told the Daily Mail. “So his death just two years later has come as a bitter body blow to her.”

The one-hour funeral service for Perry took place Friday at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills neighborhood. Aniston was driven to the service by bodyguards. She met up with Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow — all dressed in black, — outside the venue so that they could walk in together, according to aerial paparazzi shots obtained by the New York Post.

Matt LeBlanc joined them later, and the group also gathered inside with Perry’s relatives, including mother Suzanne Perry, father John Bennett Perry and stepfather Keith Morrison, the Daily Mail said.

Once inside, Aniston mostly  “kept to herself,” the source told the Daily Mail over the weekend. Insiders also told Page Six that “The Morning Show” star and Cox are both “reeling” the most over Perry’s death, out of the five remaining “Friends” cast members.

“Jen is probably the one who is struggling most acutely,” an insider said. “It’s a second massive loss in less than a year, with the one-year anniversary of her dad’s death just around the corner.”

Aniston and Perry, born just six months apart, were the youngest of the six “Friends” cast members and formed an immediate camaraderie when the show first started shooting in 1994, the Daily Mail said.

In Perry’s 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” he said they had met three years before they began working together on “Friends.”

“I was immediately taken by (Aniston) (how could I not be?) and liked her,” Perry wrote, according to the New York Post. “And I got the sense she was intrigued too — maybe it was going to be something.”

Perry said he asked her out, but she turned him down. Perry joked that his crush on her wore off, thanks to her “deafening lack of interest.” But they became close friends, and Aniston “reached out the most” amid his addiction. She also was the “Friends” co-star who confronted him about his drinking on the set.

“I’m really grateful to her for that,” he told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer while promoting his memoir in October 2022, the New York Post reported.

Eighteen years earlier, ahead of the “Friends’ series finale in 2004, Aniston broke down in tears while talking about Perry during an interview with Sawyer, the Post reported. Aniston said she hoped that he was “all right.”

“He struggled,” Aniston told Sawyer. “We didn’t know. We weren’t equipped to deal with it. Nobody had ever dealt with that. And the idea of even losing him. … But he’s all right.”

During Perry’s funeral service, “there was not a dry eye,” an observer told the Daily Mail. “There were a lot of tears and laughter. Only close friends and family spoke.”

After the service, Perry was buried in a dark wooden coffin in a closed ceremony, the Daily Mail said. Preliminary toxicology reports showed the actor did not have fentanyl or meth in his body at the time of his death. His full autopsy report results have been delayed pending additional testing.