“Friends” creators reflect on first series anniversary without Matthew Perry: 'He made us laugh every day'

David Crane, Marta Kauffman, and Kevin Bright are planning for a solemn celebration of the series' 30th anniversary in the wake of Perry's death.

It's been 30 years since Friends first hit the air and changed television forever. Without the late Matthew Perry, however, this anniversary won't be like the others.

"It's a huge loss," series co-creator Marta Kauffman said Friday on the Today show, two days before the 30th anniversary of the beloved sitcom's premiere.

Perry died in October at 54, from "acute effects of ketamine," and last month five individuals close to him were arrested in connection with his death. Perry's absence, Kauffman reflected, "does make the 30th a little fraught."

Fellow executive producer Kevin Bright said that Perry had been "fighting the good fight for so long, and it really did feel like from the reunion that he'd finally found some peace." He was referring to the 2021 Friends reunion special on Max, which marked only the second time all six cast members had shared a room since the show went off the air in 2004.

"He made us laugh every day," Bright said of Perry. Kauffman added that "David [Crane, her co-creator] always said he was the funniest man in a room."

Perry's Friends costars have all expressed grief over his loss. Lisa Kudrow revealed in June that she'd been rewatching the series for the first time, having been unable to watch it previously "because it's too embarrassing to watch yourself." For Kudrow, the rewatch was about "just celebrating how hilarious he was — and that is what I want to remember [about him]."

Related: New Friends Experience in Las Vegas to let fans revisit Ross and Rachel's drunken chapel scene: 'Hello, Mrs. Ross!'

Perry's onscreen wife Courteney Cox called Perry "probably one of the funniest human beings in the world" in May, adding that "he visits me a lot, if we believe in that." Cox shared that "there are a lotta people that are, I think, that guide us. I do sense, yeah, I sense Matthew's around, for sure."

Speaking to the U.K. newspaper The Times recently, Kauffman said that Perry was the Friends cast member she "had the most contact with" while he was still alive. "About two weeks before [he died] he and I were FaceTiming and he seemed really good," she recalled.

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Kauffman also expressed reticence over how to proceed with celebrating the series' 30th anniversary in the wake of such tragedy. "Two things come to mind" when she thinks of how to square that circle, she said. "One of them is to donate to drug treatment centers — let's fight the disease. And the second way is to watch Friends and remember him not as a man who died like that but as a man who was hilariously funny and brought joy to everybody."

Like most of his costars, Friends was the first big role Perry landed in his career. But he had worked prodigiously since he earned his first role at age 10. He revealed in 2015 that he almost didn't accept the role of Chandler Bing when it was offered to him.

Perry said he was "off the market" when he got the first Friends script "because I had taken a job on a pilot called LAX 2194 that was about baggage handlers at L.A. Airport in the year 2194." He liked Friends more but was planning to stay loyal to the choice he'd already made, until a Fox executive called its pilot "the worst thing we've ever seen in our lives."

Perry was subsequently cast on Friends, and the rest is TV history.

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